


Memento Mori

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Biting, Blood Drinking, Character Study, Edgar and Charlotte were briefly engaged post-game, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, References to bereavement, references to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 04:15:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17015535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Twenty-five years after leaving for Scotland and vanishing without a trace, Jonathan Reid returns to Edgar Swansea's life in much the same way he left it: half-dead, disoriented, and drenched in blood.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/gifts).



> Thank you to FourCatProductions for betaing.

**One**

 

When Edgar was a boy, he’d been afraid of the dark. There were times when it seemed to him like a lifetime ago, but of course it _was_ a lifetime ago: some threescore and eight years ago he was born, and never mind that he didn’t look a day over forty-three.

At school that fear of darkness was an endless source of humiliation, and those were the days before modern electricity became commonplace. His was not the sort of school that appreciated slightly built boys who weren’t keen on dashing about on rugby pitches in torrential rain, or who flinched when cricket balls came pelting at them at breakneck speed, or who still occasionally cried at night.

Nor did it help that his father had begun to develop a reputation as an eccentric thanks to his membership of the Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole, although ironically it was Edgar’s mother who’d been the true legacy of that order. Half her life she’d spent trying to escape it. It was out of respect for her that he’d waited until relatively late in life to join – she was determined that a different path should be his – but he had been steeped in the Brotherhood’s works from the very beginning.

Even as a boy he believed, and he knew the truth: that the entirety of mankind’s search for knowledge was a quest to illuminate the world so that the monsters that dwelled in the shadows, amongst whose number he supposed he ought to count himself these days, could be driven back. And still he never knew true darkness until he came to the Elms.

In London, there was always a source of light somewhere, even after the blackout was declared: a window incorrectly masked, a fire burning somewhere in the depths of the city, searchlights roaming across the sky in hunt of German bombers, the silvery false moons of barrage balloons.

The countryside came as something of a shock.

Vampires were urban creatures at heart, forever cursed to be at odds with their twin natures. Reclusive and wary of mortals on the one hand, yet drawn to those vast conflagrations of life, the great cities and towns on the other. Although perhaps it wasn’t life that they were drawn to.

Jonathan had told him once of running into foreign vampires in the streets of London during the 1918 epidemic, as though the suffering it caused were an entertaining spectacle put on for their amusement, and these days, while Great Britain had so far escaped the worst of this second great war, Edgar could sense something great and terrible massing on the horizon in Europe. Death’s song, perhaps, singing out to whatever disease ran in his veins.

Even before his rebirth, he preferred to have the ebb and noise of the city about him. The theatre, lectures, exhibitions: there was always something to keep him busy. He even missed the red brickwork and draughty corridors of that fine old Victorian institution, Pembroke Hospital, although the Elms had plenty of draughty corridors of its own. Edgar hadn’t been able to work at the Pembroke for many years out of necessity – too many East End matriarchs who never forgot a face – but he was certain he’d be back one day, assuming the building survived the Blitz. Even if by some miracle he should be delivered of his need to avoid direct sunlight, he'd already had quite enough of the countryside to know that a quiet country practice was not for him, pleasant as a life spent pootling in a motor car along peaceful lanes to visit wealthy patients might seem.

It was dark the night Jonathan Reid came back into his life, almost twenty-five years after his departure for Scotland, and he returned in much the same manner that he’d entered it in the first place: half-dead, disoriented, and drenched in blood.

Looking back, Edgar could never be quite certain what it was that put him in mind of hunting that night. The Regency manor house he could sense at a distance was shuttered up so tightly that not the slightest sliver of light could escape, and the night was overcast and threatening rain. There was no moon or stars to light his way as he let himself out of his modest little cottage which stood on the grounds of the estate. True, he was hungry, and the need for blood pressed urgently at him, but not a day had gone by since his rebirth when that hadn’t been the case. The hunger could never truly be assuaged for long, only for those blessed few seconds after embracing a mortal, and he had not directly fed from a living human body for over two decades. Animals were a different matter, but Edgar never had been much of a hunter.

It was as if something primeval had stirred inside him, drawn to the darkness. On a night like this, the last vestiges of his boyhood fears were chased away, and he truly became a creature of the night, stalking deer through a forest black as pitch with teeth and nails and shadow. He was the source of the tales told of red eyes burning in the bitter night.

All fanciful nonsense, of course, but it had a strange sort of power even so.

Beneath his feet the grass was damp with dew, and every scent sharp and crisp and clear. He wasn’t the only hunter out that night. The pallid shadow of an owl’s outstretched wings passed like a ghost above him. It had caught a mouse, the scent of the blood a goad to his own hunger, now sharpened to a keen point. He’d fed, but not as recently as he would have liked. The other evening, a nurse had cut herself on broken glass, and it had taken all his willpower to stop himself from gripping her wrist and bringing her hand to his mouth, the hot iron scent of her blood so strong it made him dizzy.

But he resisted. He stitched up the wound, even with his heart hammering and his teeth prickling with the urge to rip and bite and tear, and made a quiet note to take closer notice of his body and urges in future. He’d been growing complacent.

The scream came from the woods. Not human.

Had Edgar been tucked up in bed or at his desk working in the safe and warm, he might have put it down to a fox, but now he recognised the eerie scream of a Skal, thick with hunger and hatred and suffering. It was followed by another cry, and this one was unmistakably human, the bellow of a man under attack. Curiosity won over caution and Edgar moved into the woods so fast that to the mortal eye he would have seemed to have dissolved into smoke.

His hunger had risen. In the darkness, he sped through the forest so fast it was a wonder he didn’t smash into the trunk of a tree, or blind himself on a branch, but he had given himself over to the hunt and was working on an older instinct that didn’t quite belong to him. He could smell the turned-meat reek of the Skals, and they snarled as if they had cornered an animal.

There was blood in the air. Edgar slowed his pace as the man cried out again, and briefly wondered, as he ripped a branch from a tree, the palms of his hands itching at the touch of the living wood, what he really intended to do once he’d rescued him.

Since his rebirth, his thoughts had always had a deceptive undertow. Why, of _course_ he intended only to save the mortal, because that was basic human decency, but there was a second set of thoughts lying just beneath, quieter but more insistent, that made Edgar wonder if his true intention was not to act as saviour, but to claim the Skals’ prey for himself.

A squirming sensation passed over his skin and he rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. And then he darted out between the trees, ready to strike.

Blood. A searing splash of crimson burning bright as the sun, splattered against a tree. It was the first, and briefly the only, thing he saw. Then he became aware of a maddened Skal twisting towards him. Another scrabbled on the ground with a struggling figure.

The closer Skal hissed, closing in. He lashed at it with the branch, remembering at the last moment that Skals don’t share the same aversion to living plant life that Ekons do. Which was… unfortunate.

It flinched, cowering away, covering its face with its arms. A feint. It whipped back, darting beneath the wildly thrashing branch and coming up inside his reach. It slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. Teeth snapped inches from his throat.

This, _this,_ was why he’d chosen a life of peace. Because he was no bloody good at the alternative. That was another lesson he’d learned early at school and probably should have paid more attention to. And he learned a second vital lesson as he tried in vain to stab the branch upwards to pierce the Skal’s neck: simply ripping a branch directly from a tree seldom makes for an adequate stake.

A shadow loomed over them, gripped the Skal and hauled it away.

Edgar’s first realisation was that this was no mortal he had attempted to rescue but a fellow Ekon, and his next was one of utter bewilderment as the Ekon buried his teeth in the shrieking, scrabbling Skal’s flesh. _Oh good Lord_ , he thought, and opened his mouth on numbed instinct as the Skal blood sprayed over him. It had a faint sour taste, like vinegary communion wine.

The Ekon let the Skal drop and stared down at Edgar with no sign of recognition, breathing harshly and wavering on his feet.

He should have known straight away. How he hadn’t he couldn’t think, because suddenly, despite the reek of the Skals and the clamour of the blood, the Ekon was all he could smell. Into that frozen tableau came his own voice, hushed and disbelieving.

" _Jonathan_?"

The Ekon collapsed. And another instinct was triggered, that of the doctor. Edgar moved at once, feeling for him in the darkness. No need to check the pulse since he could sense it, but Jonathan’s skin was waxy and too cool to the touch. He was alive, barely, although he would recover with time, but mainly Edgar couldn’t quite believe it was him. Still, here he was, yielding to the touch, his distinctive features unmistakeable.

"My God." Edgar exhaled a sharp breath, hooked Jonathan’s arm over his shoulder and heaved him up. He was a dead weight, and very nearly a foot taller, but even so he was much lighter than Edgar had expected, as if he’d grown much less substantial in the intervening twenty odd years. "Come on, dear boy," Edgar murmured into his hair. "Let’s get you home."

 

* * *

 

In some ways he hadn’t changed at all. In others he might have been a completely different man. His hair and beard were neat as always, not having grown so much as a millimetre since his untimely death. It was this lack of change that made the rest of him so disconcerting. His eyes were hollow and deep with shadows. And he was far, far thinner than Edgar remembered, dressed in grimy blood-stained clothes that had been well-tailored once.

He sat in the chair, as still as a statue, his eyes following Edgar about the room. He looked almost as wild as the most savage Skals, dangerous enough that Edgar kept one eye fixed on him as he moved about, aware that to Jonathan everything living would look like prey.

Even when Edgar had first made his acquaintance in an insalubrious bar in the docks of London, freshly turned and floundering in a new world he knew nothing about, he hadn’t seen Jonathan so close to madness.

"What on earth happened to you, Jonathan?"

No reply.

Edgar knelt before him, eyeing up the wounds near his collarbone, the flesh ragged and torn. One bite in particular was especially nasty, so deep he suspected it had left teeth marks in the bone.

"I’ll clean your wound, if you’ll permit me," he said, raising the cotton pad and bottle of iodine so Jonathan could see. He didn’t look and gave no hint that he understood, but nor did he flinch away when Edgar touched the cotton pad to his neck, and gently began to wipe away the Skal’s reeking saliva. The only reaction was a slight drawing back of his bloodless lips from his teeth.

"I feel a little like Androclus. Rather nastier than a thorn, though," Edgar murmured, carefully dabbing at the wound. "And Skal saliva prevents the swift healing of flesh in our kind. It really is fascinating stuff, Jonathan. You know it inhibits blood clotting in humans too? Just think of the applications in medical science..." Jonathan’s breath stirred Edgar hair. He glanced up, found Jonathan staring at him, pupils shrunk to pinpricks in the pale blue irises.

"You really don’t remember me, do you?" he asked. Again there was no response. An electric prickle of fear ran down Edgar’s spine, but it was edged with excitement, a thrill that skirted very close to joy at finally seeing his Maker again, despite the terrible condition he was in. He set the cotton pad down and leaned closer, his hands resting upon Jonathan’s knees. "Are you hungry, Jonathan?"

Of course. Of _course._ Edgar could feel his hunger, surging out from him in waves. It rekindled his own thirst, and reminded him of a silly fantasy he’d harboured in the early years when he was still certain Jonathan would come back: the two of them hunting together, loping through field and forest, after deer in Richmond Park, perhaps, or, more likely, rats in Southwark.

Jonathan’s wounds were already starting to heal. "All done." Edgar stood up. "Wait here, I’ll be back shortly."

Convalescent home or not, the Elms was still a house, and Lord Acton and his family were resident there when they weren’t enjoying the decadent Ritzkrieg life in London. Lord Acton was a long-standing mortal member of the Ascalon Club, and knew very well what Edgar was. It was Lord Acton who had provided the cottage on the grounds for his use, a most kind and generous offer, although Edgar had no doubt he had an ulterior motive. The Elms was far enough away from London to escape the worst of the bombing, but it was by no means completely safe. Lord Acton must have considered it something of a coup to have his very own pet vampire at his beck and call in case he or his wife were mortally wounded in an air raid.

Edgar also suspected Lord Acton was operating under the mistaken apprehension that once a vampire left the building, it would not be able to return without a further invitation. He ought to have done more research. Aside from Edgar’s own slightly battered moral code and the threat of Ascalon crashing down upon his head like a ton of bricks, there would be nothing at all to stop him if he returned with murder on his mind.

It was an alarming thought.

There were times when Edgar looked back at his mortal life and was astonished at how blithe he’d been. He’d always taken precautions, but now that he knew a little more about vampires, and how all-encompassing blood-hunger could be, there was a part of him that wanted to take that younger version of himself by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Good Lord, it was a wonder he managed to survive at all. Very few of the vampires he’d met over the years had been as strong-willed as Jonathan Reid, including Edgar himself.

There was nothing at all to stop him from stealing into the manor house like a thief and going to the rooms where the nurses slept.

He gave Nurse Harvey quite the fright when he knocked softly on her door. She was dressed for bed, and pressed her hand to her heart as she smiled uncertainly at he. "Is something the matter, Doctor?"

"I’m afraid so, Nurse." He kept his voice soft and persuasive, letting compulsion enter it. "There’s an urgent matter I need to attend to, and it’s going to require some blood. Would you mind..."

"Of course, Doctor. We all have to do our bit, don’t we?" She held the door open, and he moved past her into her room.

He wasn’t proud of it, of how he’d steal their blood a pint at a time in a slow controlled leeching that left them weakened and him constantly starving and none of them happy, but at least with needle and tube there was no danger of infection, and the blood, if not the fresh hot vibrant blood direct from a living body, was still blood, and that of a healthy person. So long as it was consumed quickly, it was perfectly adequate for his needs. There was no danger of creating a Skal, or of being caught in the act like some coffin-dwelling Nosferatu, and no reason at all for the patient to die. Stolen blood, but better than the alternative. And certainly better than letting himself starve to death.

 

* * *

 

Coming home was rather like returning to a house in which he’d just locked up an angry tiger. And the worst of it was Edgar couldn’t sense him. The cottage was as silent as the proverbial grave, an unfortunate metaphor, but an accurate one. Edgar let himself in, his ability to smell hampered by the bag of fresh hot blood cradled in his arms. All the way back from the manor house he had been fighting an aching need to forget Jonathan and drink it all down himself. It wouldn’t be enough – a scant pint of blood could never be enough – but it might just have taken the edge off his hunger.

All his attention was so focused on that bag that he missed the movement behind him. Jonathan unfolded from the shadows, more animal than man, more Skal than Ekon, and slammed Edgar up against the wall. Thankfully the blood bag remained intact, because if that had popped, spilling still warm blood over Edgar’s hands, he wasn’t sure what would have happened. They might have descended into a frenzied blood orgy, perhaps, the likes of which he could only imagine in his most maddened dreams. He’d heard some interesting rumours about the Ascalon club...

As it was, with the solid mass of Jonathan’s body against his back, all he could do was brace himself against the wall while Jonathan pressed his face against his neck with the low rumbling growl of an animal about to strike.

"Stop that at once, Jonathan," Edgar said, a sharp rebuke that sounded faintly ludicrous.

Jonathan curled his arm around his chest, cupping Edgar’s jaw and tilting his head to the side to expose his neck. His hand slid down, finding its inevitable way to the blood bag, and the growl in Jonathan’s throat deepened in pitch. His fingers spanned over Edgar’s, twining between them like a lover’s.

"It’s for you," Edgar told him, although frankly he wasn’t certain he wanted to give it to Jonathan any longer. He wanted it for himself. "A gift. It’s fresh blood, and still warm."

Moving slowly and gently so as not to rile him further, Edgar slid his hand out from under Jonathan’s, leaving him clutching the bag. It was harder to do than he’d anticipated. He placed his hands against the wall, and braced himself. He didn’t really think Jonathan would bite him and yet in that moment, with his forehead pressing against the wall, there was part of him, wild with the scent of blood and perennially unsatisfied hunger, that desperately wanted to be bitten.

Jonathan released him without warning, bringing the bag of blood up to his mouth. He ripped into it with a guttural snarl, as it flooded his mouth. Edgar looked around. Jonathan’s eyes were squeezed shut in ecstasy, the blood spilling over his chin and his chest. The back of his legs hit a chair and he sank down, and Edgar could see him clearly for what seemed like the first time, how incongruous the neatness of his hair and beard appeared when he was sucking dry a bag of blood.

His gasp of desperation when it was emptied was so heartfelt that Edgar felt a pang of guilt, and inwardly berated himself for not having taken more, although in good conscience he couldn’t have, no matter how hungry his Maker. How much could he have taken? Two pints, three? And even that wouldn’t have been enough. Only draining her dry and leaving her a bloodless corpse would have come anywhere near, and that he could not do. Not even for Jonathan, who now tore open the bag to lap at the insides like a kitten after butter, seeking every trace of blood. He sucked it even from his fingers, working at the dried crusts trapped beneath his fingernails with his teeth.

Disturbed to see his Maker reduced to the state of the most bestial Skal, Edgar stirred, and instantly Jonathan went still, head snapping up.

From this angle Edgar couldn’t see his eyes, only his profile, which in the past had always put him in mind of Dracula, as though Jonathan had stepped straight out of the pages of Bram Stoker’s novel, with Edgar playing the part of his Van Helsing (hopefully not his Renfield).

Cautiously, Edgar took a step closer and said his name.

Jonathan drew in a breath, glancing down at the remains of the blood bag clutched in his fingers. A flicker of an expression crossed his face, his heavy brow knitting in the first moment of human feeling Edgar had seen so far. _Guilt_. Here he was, caught in the act. And then he glanced up.

"Edgar?" His voice was very slight and faint, little more than an exhalation on a breath, and he sounded puzzled as if Edgar was the very last person he might have expected to see.

"Yes, Jonathan, it’s me."

He held out the blood bag in a wordless plea.

Edgar shook his head, feeling another painful pang pierce his heart, because he knew only too well how Jonathan must be suffering. "I’m afraid there is no more. I took as much as I judged prudent. I realise it doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere near enough, but there will be more, I promise you…"

He was nodding, squeezing his eyes closed as though the electric light was hurting them. "The blood… where did you..."

"One of the nurses. A most obliging young woman."

"You didn’t–"

"Goodness, no. Nurse Harvey’s as strong as an ox. A little weakened by the blood loss, but she’ll feel right as rain in the morning, I assure you." Edgar hesitated, forced a smile. "You’d be proud of me, Jonathan. I’ve been following your example when it comes to feeding."

Jonathan squinted, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "The light… Would you mind..."

"Is it hurting your eyes?"

A nod, his fingers working at his brow. "Just a headache I’ve been struggling to shake for what feels like the longest time." Edgar turned the light off, plunging them into a twilight gloom, and Jonathan exhaled in relief. "Thank you, Edgar." For the first time, he sounded very nearly like himself again, although his voice was still hoarse.

Edgar took the opportunity to move closer to him, and settled down by the chair, trying to ignore the blood bag. "What happened to you, Jonathan? Where have you been?"

"I… I can’t quite seem to remember." There was an edge to his voice, the first hint of mounting desperation and panic.

"All right, not to worry." Edgar caught hold of his hand and squeezed. "Listen to me, Jonathan. I think you’ve had a nasty shock tonight. Perhaps you should get some sleep, and with any luck everything may look very different tomorrow."

He nodded, started to his feet, and very nearly lost his balance until Edgar caught him, not at all happy at how weak he seemed.

Edgar already knew something about the effects of starvation in Ekons. With the help of Old Bridget, the leader of the sewer Skals of East London, he’d conducted some experiments into the withholding of blood, testing his own limits and how long a vampire could be expected to survive without nourishment. The Brotherhood had always assumed that period to be indefinite, although after five months Bridget decided to bring the experiment to an end as his howling was beginning to upset the Skals. It took a further two months before she judged it safe enough to release him.

If he’d had to guess, he would have said Jonathan hadn’t fed in a very long time, at least three months. He’d need to feed again and soon.

"The spare room is this way," Edgar told him, leading him up the stairs and along the landing. "I’m afraid I haven’t any clothes that will fit you, but I’m sure I’ll be able to dig you something out tomorrow."

"Thank you." On the threshold of the spare room, Jonathan looked around. "Is this my room at the Pembroke? It seems different."

"The _Pembroke_?" Edgar almost dropped him, so startled was he by the question. "No, Jonathan. We’re in Hertfordshire." He managed a chuckle, but even to his own ears it sounded strained. "You really have been away from Whitechapel for too long if you mistook this for the Pembroke."

Jonathan shook his head, bringing his hand up to his forehead again. "You mentioned a nurse, I thought… I assumed this was the hospital."

"It’s a convalescent home, so not a hospital as such. I live on the grounds of the estate. It used to be the gamekeeper’s house, back when the estate had a gamekeeper." As Jonathan dropped onto the bed, the springs squeaking beneath the unexpected weight, Edgar reached on instinct for the light switch, and caught himself. "A relatively quiet life for me, or at least it was until you returned."

Wondering if he’d ever be able to rid the room of the smell of the blood, he waited for Jonathan to lie down, but he stayed perched on the edge of the bed.

"Well..." Edgar said. "Good night then. I’m sure things will look very different indeed after you’ve had a rest."

And he stepped towards the doorway, partly to escape the smell of blood, and partly because he couldn’t bear his Maker’s blank eyed look and the reddish shadows beneath his eyes. At the threshold he froze, struck by the strangest feeling that Usher Talltree would be waiting for him on the landing.

For once in a life of relative certainties Edgar had absolutely no idea what he ought to do. The Brotherhood had made it excruciatingly clear that he would be expected to inform them immediately if his Maker ever showed his face in England again, but then again here was Jonathan right in front of him, who… well, who very clearly needed his help.

Jonathan lifted his head like a cat tasting something on the air. His eyes narrowed to slits, and his mouth parted, and Edgar knew very well what it was he was listening for – the manor house, not so far off that they couldn’t sense the tug of blood. In Jonathan’s half-starved state, the hunger would have sharpened every one of his senses, the need to feed blotting out both the world and the higher functions of the mind: love, decency, conscience, all gone and nothing left but hunger. His fingers dug into the quilt, and when he spoke, his voice shook.

"You need to stop me, Edgar."

"Don’t be ridiculous," Edgar said, although he’d been starting to wonder the same thing.

"It wasn’t enough. The blood you gave me. It wasn’t..." Jonathan’s voice broke off into a guttural snarl, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to cut it off. "It’s only made me hungrier. The people in that house, they’re all I can smell. Their hearts, their blood…"

"You have to fight it, Jonathan. I know how overwhelming it is, believe me, but if any of us can fight it, I’m quite certain it’s you..." Edgar faltered. He’d believed that once, and had kept believing it all through the years, even despite Talltree’s reports. He would have sworn on his mother’s life that Jonathan was not a killer, but now that Jonathan was sitting before him, and so _changed_ , the truth was he had no idea. Nor was Jonathan listening. He was lost, his head dropped back, his eyes narrowed with the promise of blood.

Edgar rolled up his sleeve, baring his wrist, and bit down until his own blood flooded his mouth. Jonathan stiffened, his head darting around like a snake’s.

"I realise it’s not the same as mortal blood," Edgar said, "but I offer it to you freely and willingly. My blood, Jonathan. Drink."

Jonathan gripped Edgar’s arm, breathing in the scent. Blood trickled down Edgar’s forearm, and it was to the inside of the wrist, rather than to the bite, that Jonathan brought his mouth, brushing lips still sticky with mortal blood against the fine tracery of veins. His tongue darted out to taste the skin. Off balance, Edgar placed his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder to steady himself, feeling how the muscles tautened and bunched beneath the filthy shirt. Although whether Jonathan was readying himself to drink or to prevent himself from drinking Edgar could not know.

 _I am not prey_ , he thought, with a sudden savage fierceness that was utterly unlike him.

Jonathan’s grip tightened.

"You don’t have to do this, Edgar." There was anger in his voice. A tone Edgar had come to know well from him, and it made Jonathan seem very nearly like his old self. Something else he’d forgotten how much he missed, that anger.

"You have to feed, Jonathan."

He was on the verge of losing control. Edgar pressed a hand to the back of Jonathan’s head, where his hair was grimy and matted, and slid his arm down, bringing the wound to Jonathan’s mouth. He shuddered, and drank.

It was not a sensation Edgar ever could have adequately prepared himself for. He’d never allowed anyone – human or Skal or Ekon – to feed directly from his body. He’d traded his blood with Bridget partly from altruism and partly as payment for her help and advice, but it had always been a clinical, sterile transaction. It had never once been anything like this. He hadn’t been prepared for the simple joy of it, and he wondered if it had been the same way for Jonathan when he’d turned him, this glorious act of loving worship.

Jonathan fed, slow at first, then harder, ripping into the arm with his teeth because Edgar hadn’t bitten deeply enough, and the flow was insufficient. It was agonising; his teeth grated against the bone, but the pleasure of the moment was enough to drown out the pain, if not obliterate it completely. If anything, the pain seemed to make the pleasure that much brighter, and in that moment, this one act seemed all Edgar ever truly wanted.

After the clinical sterility of needles and blood bags, this animalistic act of ripping at his own flesh in a darkened room seemed to Edgar to lend the moment meaning, and whatever bonds already existed between them twined ever tighter.

It had been so long he’d almost forgotten how it felt to be around Jonathan, the way his presence seemed to make Edgar’s blood burn, as if his very veins ran molten. When he’d first been reborn, he’d put it down to his new state and had gloried in it; it was savage and beautiful and wondrous, and really not so very terrible a thing for a doctor to be, all things considered. And then Jonathan had left, and he'd realised that at least some of that wonder had been down to Jonathan’s proximity. Still, even when his morale was at its lowest ebb, there hadn’t been a single moment when he’d regretted his choice.

Jonathan’s arm snaked around his back, drawing him closer. Edgar couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to be intimate or the instinct of a killer to prevent his prey from escaping, and he honestly didn’t care. The velvet fuzz of Jonathan’s close cut hair rasped against his fingers.

Jonathan was fighting it now, his movements jerky, as if he desperately wanted to pull his head away, and Edgar wished Jonathan’s hair was longer so he could wind his fingers around it and urge him to keep drinking until he was sated or until Edgar was drained dry, whichever came first.

He would have given him everything he had. Every drop. He would have carved his own flesh from his bones if Jonathan had asked him to, if their kind could be sated with mere meat.

Edgar dropped his head to Jonathan’s throat, his lips peeling back. He would have sworn he had no intention of biting him. He wanted only to breathe in the scent of the blood that rushed through the veins beneath his Maker's skin. Jonathan’s hand slid up beneath his shirt, nails scratching at his back in warning as Edgar pressed his teeth against the skin, not yet breaking it, although he wanted to taste that blood again so badly he ached.

But Jonathan had little enough to spare. This was enough, Edgar told himself, this was as far as he would go, although even through the blood-haze of hunger, he already knew it was a lie. A moment or two longer, and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

Jonathan tore away, gasping. "Enough," he said, and all Edgar could think, blinded by hunger, was _No!_ And damn him, if Jonathan wasn’t going to feed to satiation, then why the hell shouldn’t _he_? As he readied himself for the strike, Jonathan caught his other wrist and said his name. That voice was the only thing that could have pierced through the haze.

Edgar eased his mouth away from Jonathan’s throat. Pressed his forehead against the damp skin there instead, faint from blood loss. Jonathan’s hand brushed over his hair, almost tender.

"I took too much."

"No, no, I’m..." A brief moment of dizziness. "I’ll be fine in a minute. Just let me… let me catch my breath." He pulled back, and stepped out of reach, wiping his face. "Besides, I offered it willingly."

"You couldn’t have know what it meant."

"Oh?" Edgar said. "And you do? I’m no stranger to vampires, Jonathan. I’m not some… naive young virgin baring her neck for the count." His arm was painful now, prickling with pins and needles as the flesh healed. He raised it, studying the wound as it knit back together before his eyes. He never wearied of that sight, a miracle encapsulated in his own quick-healing flesh.

"No?" And there it was, his reward, the first sign of Jonathan’s black humour creeping back into his voice.

"Of course not. I’ve been quite busy in your absence." A heavy silence met his words. Edgar glanced up from his arm to find Jonathan eyeing him warily, and was reminded that they’d parted on terms that were, if not exactly hostile, then not without tension. "I’ve done a fair amount of research into my – into _our_ – condition."

"Edgar..." Jonathan hesitated, looking as if he wanted to continue, then shook his head and rubbed at his mouth. When he found the blood smeared on his chin, he went still. Edgar gave him a weak smile, and he half-clenched his fist in a moment of indecision before he made up his mind and smeared his fingers on his filthy shirt. Edgar tried not to feel hurt. "Should I be worried?"

"I certainly hope not. Not about me, at any rate, but we do need to keep you fed. Amongst other things I’ve been studying the effects of starvation on the Ekon body and mind. I’ve learnt a lot. Enough to know that playing the miser when it comes to blood is a little like playing with a lighted match around gunpowder. Eventually it’s bound to blow up in your face."

Jonathan tilted his head. "Do I want to know..."

"Not really, no. Although I couldn’t have done it without Old Bridget’s assistance. She really is the most remarkable woman, Skal or not. And speaking of remarkable women..." Edgar swallowed. "Are we going to address the elephant in the room?"

"No, we are not."

"I see." Edgar stared at him. Jonathan had dropped his head, and sat hunched with his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees. His parting was matted with dried blood. "Well, fair enough. None of my business, I suppose."

"No," Jonathan said, quietly, grimly. "It isn’t."

"You do realise I’m not the only one who’s going to be asking questions? Where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing..."

Jonathan went still, lifting his gaze. There was a strange look about his eyes, not angry, but wary, almost fearful, as if whatever he thought Edgar might be about to say terrified him. He never had been a man who was easily frightened.

"The Brotherhood will want to speak to you. We’ve done our best to keep an eye on you, but you might as well have been smoke for the last couple of decades."

Almost. They’d caught glimpses of him over the years. Never anything certain, no confirmed sightings, but the stories they’d heard had been enough for the Ban of the Dragon to be suggested for the first time in over a century. It had been Frederick Haughton who had brought it up, although Edgar was certain it was Talltree who was behind it. Haughton was far too ineffectual and indecisive to venture an idea like that without at least a gentle nudge. But there was nothing in Talltree’s serene expression to indicate his opinion in the matter as he smoothly laid out the cards. His eyes were concealed behind the smoked glass lenses of his spectacles, but Edgar knew he was watching for his reaction.

 _Do you hear his voice, Edgar?_ His voice was gentle, his words anything but. _Does he whisper to you like a lover when you lay your head down?_

Jonathan was shaking his head. Edgar clamped down on his frustration and did his best to jolly him along. "Oh, come now, Jonathan, we’re past all that, aren’t we? Anything you tell me, naturally I’ll keep in the strictest confidence."

"I can’t tell you because I don’t remember. I feel as though I’ve been in a dream these last few years."

Edgar nodded distractedly and pushed his hand through his disarrayed hair. He wasn’t certain he believed it, but he felt too weary to argue. All he wanted to do – aside from feed, naturally – was crawl into bed and sleep for a week. "Perhaps we should both get some rest. Let me take your clothes and I’ll put them aside to be washed."

As Jonathan undressed, he glanced up, and Edgar realised he’d been running his fingers over the smooth patch of freshly healed skin on his arm. He cleared his throat sheepishly and tugged down his shirt sleeve to cover it. "Well… goodnight."

Jonathan murmured Edgar’s name when he was at the doorway, and he glanced back with something that might have been hope if moving hadn’t brought on a wave of dizziness so strong that his legs crumpled beneath him. He had to cling onto the door frame for support. "Do you know where I’ve been?" Jonathan asked.

"Not for certain, no."

"But you have your suspicions."

"I really..." Edgar drew a breath. "Do you know, I think you were right, Jonathan. You did take a little too much blood. I’m feeling quite faint."

Jonathan gave a grim little laugh and lay down, tucking his hand beneath his head and closing his eyes. "I know you too well, Edgar. I can tell when you’re trying to change the subject."

"It’s been twenty-five years," Edgar protested.

His eyes opened and he stared up at the ceiling. "Has it really been that long?"

"It’s 1943. Another war, another hospital. I might almost say it feels like old times although we’re a long way from Whitechapel–"

"And there’s no epidemic." He frowned. "There isn’t, is there?"

"Not that I know of, no. Thank heavens for small mercies."

"Goodnight, Edgar." He’d closed his eyes again, and he brought his hand to cover them to block out even the slightest hint of light. Edgar lingered a moment or two in the doorway as Jonathan’s heartbeat slowed still further.

"Goodnight," he said, and wasn’t sure if Jonathan heard him. His dark hair and beard made him look even paler, and with his eyes closed and sunken and his skin waxy pallor, he seemed to be wearing a death mask. The only colour about him was the blood staining his lips.

Edgar escaped into the corridor with Jonathan’s clothes bundled in his arms. He closed the door and sagged against it, at a loss. It took a few moments before he’d recovered enough composure to set the discarded clothes aside for the daily woman who came in on a regular basis to do the cleaning and laundry. It would raise an eyebrow, but judging by her ostentatious crucifix and her long-standing service to Lord Acton she already suspected what he was. It was almost impossible to keep secrets like that from servants.

Something heavy was weighing down the pocket of Jonathan’s trousers like a fishing weight. When Edgar pulled it out he found a small glass vial that nestled neatly into the hollow of his palm as if it belonged there. It held a dark red viscous liquid like clotting blood. Ancient, like the relic of a saint. The vial was sealed tight and he could smell nothing at all, but still an urgent thirst caught in his throat. He tilted it, watching with avidity the thick liquid oozing this way and that, until he realised he was salivating and closed his fist about it with a shiver. Carefully, ignoring his intense reluctance to part with the ampoule, he set it on the dresser outside Jonathan’s room where he’d find it when he woke.

In the end Edgar went to bed, although he already knew he didn’t have a hope of getting any sleep, no matter how exhausted he was.

Ekons didn’t sleep much as a rule. They could survive without it for long stretches of time with no ill effects, but like any mortal burning the candle at both ends it caught up with them eventually. Exhaustion made the hunger worse and Edgar needed to rest. Needed it the same way he needed to feed, like an ache in his chest, his limbs weighted with lead, but he knew sleep would be a long time in coming.

A knot of frustration tightened in his chest at having been stolen of the chance to gorge once more on the blood of his Maker, so sweet and heady and rich he could still taste it in his dreams, and not the few meagre mouthfuls Jonathan had allowed when he turned him, but a fountain of it, spilling over his lips, his tongue. So much it could have drowned him.

He wasn’t a fanciful man under most circumstances. Only when it came to Jonathan.

If Edgar closed his eyes, he’d hear him. Talltree had been right about that, even if he was wrong about everything else. Jonathan’s voice, that deep wicked voice, like a dagger sheathed in velvet, and always on the cusp of sleep. One day he feared he’d lay his head down and close his eyes and that voice would remain silent, and he’d know Jonathan was gone. Killed by the Guard or a rival Ekon or burned up like a heretic at the stake.

Just so long as it didn’t happen at the hands of the Brotherhood. He didn’t think he could have borne that.


	2. Two

**Two**

 

There was a time when Edgar thought he hated Jonathan Reid. After he left for Scotland on the trail of Lady Ashbury, which at the time Edgar hadn’t begrudged him, since like a fool he’d been convinced Jonathan would come back. Instead, Edgar had found himself deserted, newly turned and painfully ill-prepared for his new life, especially as his hunger grew. And although Jonathan had prevented the Disaster the Spanish flu lingered on, so it wasn’t just Edgar he’d deserted, but the short-staffed Pembroke and the people of the East End. At the very least Jonathan might have written, but there was no word from him at all, nothing but an awful empty silence and a hollow place in Edgar’s chest that for a while he’d sought to fill with blood. At the time, he’d thought it the second half of his punishment for his part in the epidemic.

 _Be reborn in an eternity of guilt_ , Jonathan had told him, as if that wasn’t already how Edgar was living his life.

He’d escaped being called up thanks to Lady Ashbury offering him the position at the hospital. Perhaps she even came to think of it as rescuing him, and considered it an act of altruism for which he owed her his life and undying gratitude. Edgar wasn't quite so certain. When the war began, he cloistered himself in his office at the Pembroke, because it was one of the few places he could escape the dark looks and muttered comments. Cowardice, they called it. As if it were a pleasure to be dealing with diseases born of extreme poverty in Whitechapel, where families still lived in terror of the Workhouse and children slept six to a bed with their parents in squalid tenements with all the inevitable abuses that entailed.

As if all the problems in England were solved because there was a bloody war on.

Cowardice would have been to resign his position at the hospital, to turn his back on the insults and sneers and white feathers, and enlist, as if he’d be doing a damned bit of good patching boys up just enough so they could be sent back out to die. He was not a man of war, but nor was he a coward. If he’d believed, genuinely believed, that he would have been more use on the Front than in the slums of Whitechapel, he would have gone.

And still at night, the faces of the dead paraded through his dreams. Whitechapel certainly wasn’t comfortable, but it was safe. That awful war, where over 19,000 casualties were lost on the first day of the Battle of the Somme alone. So many of the boys he’d grown up with, the men he’d known at Oxford...

In Europe Edgar’s fellow countrymen were being slaughtered by the thousand, but he was _safe_.

Guilt was not something that could be quieted with rationality and reason. He could have told Jonathan that if he’d been willing to listen.

And then came the flu, and it was as if Edgar were Jonah and the epidemic his whale, his punishment for thinking he could escape. If he would not go to the war, well, then the war would come to him, and he was left helpless, battling in the face of dwindling resources and flagging morale. The Spanish flu mostly killed the young and healthy, and they died suffering and in pain. They died _badly_ , and it crippled a nation already on its knees. The mass grave in Southwark, the shambolic morgue with the bodies piled three high... he’d thought it the end of the world.

He regretted what he did. Yet at the time it seemed like the only option, a stroke of brilliant luck, a chance to test the reparative properties of vampire blood in a controlled environment. When all around was death and chaos, there before him came a fleeting glimpse of hope. That wasn’t something he had felt in a long while, and blinded by despair, and weary of hiding that despair, from the patients under his care and the doctors and nurses who looked to him for guidance, he snatched at it.

What he regretted most of all was that he’d never had the chance to apologise to Lady Ashbury for betraying her trust. Would that she had come straight to him with the full intention of ripping his throat out before she fled London. It would have made things simpler.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised that the good lady was hiding a few secrets of her own.

When the quarantine lifted, Charlotte Ashbury visited the hospital, searching for news of her mother. He wasn’t sure which of them was the most shocked at meeting the other: Edgar, for not having known Lady Ashbury even had a daughter, or Charlotte, at realising her mother’s _aide-de-camp_ was himself a vampire. Her first reaction to meeting Edgar was fury, since she assumed that her mother had been the one to turn him, something which apparently Charlotte had been refused. It took some explaining on his part to convince her otherwise.

That had been a bad time for him, with the need to feed growing ever greater along with his own guilt and regret at how he and Jonathan had parted. He was also coming to realise how the hunger for blood was clouding his mind, affecting his decision making.

Up until then he had been following Lady Ashbury’s example, feeding on the dying and ensuring they departed the world as painlessly as he could. A kindness, almost. Except, and it happened so insidiously he did not notice until it was nearly too late, those patients he deemed worthy of sacrifice began to get healthier. He was a doctor. He made decisions every day about a patient’s likelihood to survive, but it was all too easy for the yearning to drink direct from the source to start colouring his decisions, to tilt the choice a little too far towards ‘sacrifice’ with a patient who might otherwise have a chance to live. And with every life he took, the choice became easier and harder to resist.

Charlotte Ashbury was as utterly unlike her mother as it was possible to be and yet entirely like her too, the intelligent, well-educated iconoclast. And her mother had deserted her as certainly as Jonathan had deserted Edgar. Charlotte was left with her mother’s not inconsiderable fortune, and he with the one thing he thought he’d always wanted: the gift of vampirism, a gift which Charlotte coveted. Was it any surprise that they became friends?

They were even engaged for a time. Briefly. Charlotte’s idea. To Edgar, it seemed ridiculous now, since he was far too old for her (although perhaps not so strange in the wake of the Great War when so many men lost their lives), and it wasn’t hard to guess what she really wanted from him: the gift both Jonathan and her mother refused to give her. For a while, he even considered it. He’d liked her very much.

When she travelled to Scotland to visit the castle she had inherited, he went with her. He had received his own bequest from Lady Ashbury: her extensive library, a very fine collection of esoteric works, many of which the Brotherhood had thought lost since the schism with Priwen, and which proved to be the key that unlocked the doorway that led into the Brotherhood’s inner sanctum. He’d thought his condition alone might do it, but it seemed only a bribe of knowledge would do. He hoped the bequest might be a sign she had forgiven him, although he suspected that she’d simply never taken the time to update her will.

The castle was a crumbling draughty old place, full of creaking floorboards and wild rambling gardens. They visited in twilight, Charlotte springing eagerly away from him up the steps, as if she half-expected to find her mother waiting for her, and Jonathan too, as if Edgar and Charlotte were simply late for dinner.

There was no one there, only the many paintings boxed up and a secret passage in the cold fireplace standing open.

Strangely for all her earlier eagerness, Charlotte held back, seeming afraid for the first time in the brief time Edgar had known her. He did the gentlemanly thing, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and ventured down into the cobwebby depths of the castle’s secret cellar, and found…

Nothing.

A faint lingering trace of blood on the air, perhaps, but there was nothing odd about that in a house where Ekons had lived. The cellar had been scrubbed clean and cleared of its furniture. Empty of everything, even its ghosts. They’d gone. Left so completely they hadn’t left a trace behind, and Edgar knew he’d never be able find them unless they wanted him to.

After Charlotte had eaten a cold picnic supper, they sat on a balcony watching the clouds scudding across the sky while she smoked, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs and exhaling it towards him, her head dropped back and her eyes half-closed. She’d been crying earlier, when she thought he was too distracted by the treasures in the library to hear her. She tapped ash over the edge of the stone balustrade and the breeze caught it, whipping it away.

"You’re not going to do it, are you?" she said quietly.

For a brief moment he considered pretending ignorance, but it wouldn’t have been fair on her. She deserved better. "I don’t think I can."

Her lips pressed together, bunching into a bitter line. "Because my mother wouldn’t want you to," she asked, stabbing out the cigarette on the stone. "Or because _he_ wouldn’t?"

"Your mother," he said. "She’s going to be angry enough with me as it is, without adding that into the mix."

She gave a sharp exhalation and turned her gaze on him, eyes shining with tears of anger. "I could make you. If I… if I took poison, or jumped from this tower..." She rose to her feet and leaned on the crumbling balustrade, so far out she might have toppled over purely by accident. He rose to his feet and caught hold of her arm. "It’s not that far down. I daresay it might not be enough to kill me. Would you turn me then, Edgar, if the alternative was my death? Do you care enough about me for that at least?"

"I thought you cared enough about me not to put me in that position," he said sharply, and she sagged and let him draw her back from the edge.

She sat down in a sullen silence and drew another cigarette from the pack, leaned forward to let him light it. On the first draw, she closed her eyes and exhaled into his face so that he could breathe in the smoke. It was the most intimate act that had passed between them. They’d kissed but rarely and their one and only attempt at lovemaking had proved so embarrassingly lacklustre for all parties concerned they’d mutually agreed it would probably be better not to try again. Whatever their relationship was to be, it would not be that.

Her eyes opened, shrewd. "It wasn’t really my mother you came here to find, was it, Edgar? I thought it might have been at first. You wouldn’t have been the first hapless man to fall desperately head over heels in love with my _beautiful_ mother..."

"Perhaps it was the library I came for."

"I wouldn’t put that past you, actually, but no. It was him." Another drag. "Dr Jonathan Reid. God, he was handsome. And that _voice_. I don’t often go weak at the knees for men’s silver tongues, but I think I would have made an exception for him."

He laughed, and she winked, taking another deep drag. "The question is," she continued, pointing the cigarette at him, "what was he to you."

Edgar shrugged. "An esteemed colleague. A close friend. My conscience. My progenitor." _Everything._ "I’m not sure what you want me to say, Charlotte."

Still she seemed satisfied. Then the first shadow of uncertainty returned. She flicked her gaze towards him, then glanced away. "I don’t think I can go through with this engagement, Edgar," she said, and looked startled when he started to laugh.

"Thank goodness for that."

"Well, of all the _cheek_." She’d started laughing too, flicked her cigarette out over the wall and pressed her hand to her heart in mock-outrage. "I’d thought you more of a gentleman than that, laughing at me when I’m trying to let you down gently."

"Forgive me, Charlotte, but you do have to admit it was a terrible idea. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn you only wanted me for my blood."

She worked the engagement ring from her finger, and held it out to him with a solemn expression that did not suit her. He shook his head.

"It was still a gift, Charlotte. I insist you keep it."

"Absolutely not, it belonged to your mother. You shouldn’t give it away on a whim. You’re right, this was a silly idea, and it was entirely my fault. Call it a moment of madness." When he hesitated, she sat forwards, slipped the ring into the breast pocket of his jacket, and pressed her warm hand over it. "There. Crisis averted."

He pressed his hand over hers. "How old are you, Charlotte?"

"Twenty-eight. Why?"

"In ten years’ time, if you haven’t changed your mind… If you still have your heart set on becoming an Ekon..."

"You’d do it then?"

"I don’t know, not for certain. I’ll not sure I’ll ever know if I can do it until it comes to the pinch. But I think perhaps I’ll have a better understanding of what it means to be… what I am. I’m making no promises, you understand… And for heaven’s sake if your mother turns up, please don’t tell her. I’d rather not be disembowelled."

Her eyes gleamed but her voice was arch. "I don’t know if I should risk it, you know. You might break my heart all over again."

"I doubt that very much," Edgar said. "Since I don’t believe I’ve ever broken a heart in my life, and especially not yours."

She kissed him, a chaste press of her lips against his cheek. "Poor Edgar."

"Not at all. As a matter of fact I’m heartily glad that there’s at least one thing I don’t have on my conscience."

She sighed, fiddling with the packet of cigarettes. "I’m glad you came with me," she said finally. "If you hadn’t, I think I’d still be sitting in front of that fireplace, trying to summon up the courage to go down there. Honestly. A crumbling Scottish castle. A secret passage. It’s like something out of a Mrs Radcliffe novel. I never knew my mother’s tastes ran quite so Gothic. What do you think happened to them, Edgar? You don’t think they’re..."

"No, they’re alive, I’m certain of it." Although the truth was he wasn’t certain at all.

And nor would he be, not until he heard Jonathan’s voice in his head for the first time some two weeks after he’d taken the train down to London, leaving Charlotte to deal with matters in Scotland alone. He couldn’t make out what Jonathan was saying, but he sounded devastatingly sad. Edgar wrote at once to Charlotte to tell her the news, the first sign either of them had had of their loved ones.

Ten years he gave her. They kept track of each other for a while, but eventually their letters grew sporadic and finally stopped completely, although he made certain she always knew how to reach him in an emergency. Ten years he gave her, and ten years came and went, and he never heard from Charlotte Ashbury again.

If he was honest, it came as something of a relief.

 

* * *

 

He sat outside, the only light the orange glow of his cigarette, which he had so far left almost unsmoked, letting the embers burn down. The smell was harsh, unfiltered through living lungs. He’d taken the odd puff, trying not to inhale, as if the taste alone could ever be enough to satisfy him. He had learned the hard way that inhaling properly was a dreadful idea.

Bats swooped and jinked overhead to snatch insects from the air, their high-pitched squeaks barely audible to mortal ears. Since it was clear sleep wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, he’d given up and now sat on the stone wall that encircled the cottage, practising extending his senses into the night, testing their limits. Catching every rustle in the grass, the sweet distant scent of the estate’s gardens.

And, of course, letting his thoughts play on his Maker.

Jonathan had slept for three days so far, waking only to drink down whatever blood Edgar had managed to gather, then crawling back into bed to sleep the sleep of the damned. A sleep that seemed at times virtually indistinguishable from death. He said nothing, not out loud, but Edgar heard him talking in his head. The words blurred together, but Jonathan’s voice was desolate, a quiet, hopeless plea for help.

He’d told Edgar once how he’d tried to take his own life. That had been on one particularly bad night at the Pembroke, when a number of patients had been lost to the flu, their corpses sewn up in shrouds, the fabric of which was horribly, incongruously, a rather pretty shade of cornflower blue and decorated with daisies. The sort of fabric meant for curtains in a child’s bedroom, one of many cheaply purchased bolts of leftover cloth procured by the ever resourceful and frugal British government. It had been Nurse Hawkins who had recognised the former Nurse Scow, who’d fled the Pembroke only to come back to die within its walls. An ill omen.

Once the panic had died down, Edgar was too exhausted to contemplate catching forty winks – if he tried he would have slept for a week – and too on edge to do anything but light a cigarette and pray that his hands would stop shaking. It wasn’t often that he allowed himself to feel afraid, but he was afraid then, the skull on his desk a grim little _memento mori_ , its empty-socketed gaze fixed on his and its grin mocking.

And then came Jonathan’s knock at the door, and he entered with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and dark shadows beneath his eyes, and all Edgar could think was that this was the last thing he needed, yet another reminder of death. A sour uncharitable little thought, which he regretted the moment it popped into his head. He offered Jonathan a cigarette to cover up his discomposure, which was naturally refused.

Jonathan looked very much like Edgar felt, a man close to the edge of collapse, the strain clear in his face. A bad night for everyone. The sort of night that was meant for confidences shared.

Edgar already knew – or had suspected – some of what Jonathan told him that night, but by no means all. He hadn’t known about the mass grave Jonathan had clawed himself out of, nor that the service revolver he habitually carried was one he’d stolen off a corpse that very night. When he told Edgar that his voice was numb, and for once both the innate charm that came so naturally to him and his underlying rage were gone. He narrated the event as if it had happened to another man, to a stranger. He seemed unaware that his hand had risen to his chest, his fingers brushing against his shirt above his heart.

"I shot myself, Edgar," he said quietly. Edgar stared at him in wordless silence, a wisp of cigarette smoke drifting upwards. The ash was nearly half an inch long. Jonathan tapped his chest with his first two fingers. "Right through the heart. I thought, perhaps, if I saw Mary on the other side, I might have a chance to make amends… But there was nothing there waiting, nothing but darkness. This awful, empty darkness, leavened only by blood." The corners of his mouth pulled back in a bitter humourless smile. "And then I woke up."

"Well, I’m heartily glad you did," Edgar said, and started, remembering the cigarette. He tapped it against the ashtray, and took a drag, hoping desperately that Jonathan couldn’t see how badly his hand trembled. The talk of darkness had unnerved him. "I’m not sure the Pembroke could have managed without you."

It was said vampires could not kill themselves, but this was untrue. Sunlight wouldn’t work, and nor would bullets or poison. Fire could work, if the vampire was desperate and strong-willed enough to stand still while it was consumed by the flames. Not many of them were. Fire was, as far as Edgar knew, short of marching up to a member of the Guard of Priwen and standing still while they butchered you, the only certain method of suicide for their kind.

Starvation, though, starvation never worked. No more than a tantruming toddler holding its breath. Even to be a little too hungry for a little too long, that constant low-level gnawing ache, risked bringing on what he had started to think of as blood-madness. Willpower was a limited resource. Now he’d had some experience in this twilight life, he suspected even the remarkable Lady Ashbury would have cracked eventually, feeding on the weakened and dying as she did.

He had experienced blood-madness himself in the course of his own experiments – had Bridget released him without ensuring he was back to his own self he would have carved a swathe through the East End. He would have ripped and torn and gorged his way across the city, without conscience, without remorse. His memories of those days were hazy, but Bridget told him afterwards how he had seemed utterly calm and lucid. Although he hadn’t been quite his usual self, he’d been capable of conversation and of guile, subsumed by something wicked and treacherous that lived only to sate itself on blood. A most unnerving thought and one he had never been able to forget. Whenever he allowed himself to get too hungry he could sense that other Edgar rising up, and if he fed too much… _Well._ There he was again, dripping poison into Edgar’s ear.

A vixen was prowling across the lawn. She was sleek and swift and fearless, nothing like the mangy urban foxes of London that he was used to, the scavengers that fed off the crumbs of the living. Rather like him, begging for blood from the generous or the easily compelled. Suddenly she froze and turned her head towards him, one paw lifted, ready to turn and streak away should he present a danger,

It came as an itch on the back of his neck, the acute sense of being hunted. He'd made no sound or movement, but the vixen fled, vanishing swiftly into the darkness, and he knew with certainty that he was not the one who had startled her. 

He turned his head and saw a shadow standing motionless by one of the elms lining the drive. It had been watching him for a long time.

Edgar ground out the cigarette and raised his hand in greeting.

The shadow moved in a blur of smoke and moonlight, crossing a distance of some thirty yards and reappearing in front of him faster than an eye could blink.

" _Where is he?_ "

"Good evening, McCullum. You’re looking..." Edgar paused, studying him. His hair was different, slicked back with a waxy-smelling pomade, and his features seemed sharper, more vulpine. He looked like a predator. "...Dangerous."

"Where are you keeping him?" His gaze lifted to the cottage and he drew in a breath as if tasting the air. "Is he here?"

"Is who here?"

McCullum’s gaze swung back towards him, eyes burning. "I’m not in the mood for games, Swansea."

Not much point playing innocent. But nor did Edgar have any intention of allowing himself to be intimidated either. "How did you know?"

"I’d heard he’d shown his face in England again, No surprise you’d be the one to give him shelter." His voice was low and thick with disgust. Protesting too much, Edgar suspected. There was a reason he hadn’t already stormed inside the cottage to rip Jonathan apart.

"He was disoriented and wounded. Bitten by a feral Skal. Quite badly. So yes, I gave him shelter."

"After everything he’s done." He sounded triumphant. Proved right, no doubt, finally vindicated after all these years. Strange how the three of them, Sean Hampton, Geoffrey McCullum, and Edgar Swansea, each reflected some aspect of Jonathan’s character: scientific curiosity, compassion, incandescent rage. "He always was a killer. Right from the moment he was turned."

"We don’t know that he’s anything of the kind."

"That’s shite. You’ve heard the same stories I have… No. No, you’ve heard _worse_. Your contacts are better than mine these days. I want to see him."

Edgar gestured with a flourish. "By all means. No mortal dwells in my humble abode, McCullum. You need no invitation, certainly not from me."

He took a step towards the house, then hesitated at the gate, eyeing the building uneasily. "What trickery have you got set up, Swansea? Ultra-violet curtains, poison gas, spotlights?"

"Spotlights? In a blackout? Really, McCullum, there is a war on."

"You’ll have traps. I know you. And I sure as hell don’t trust you."

"What a pity. I suppose in that case I’m afraid you’ll have to wait."

"Until?"

"Until you tell me your business with Jonathan, or… Well, I suppose until he wakes up and decides to speak to you himself. I’m sure he will wake up eventually." Edgar hesitated, eyeing the looming shadow of the darkened house. "It’s been three nights now."

He frowned. "Is something wrong with him?"

"Do you know, McCullum, if I didn’t know you better, I might take that for genuine concern. He’s clearly been under a great deal of pressure. Exhaustion, nervous strain..." Edgar hesitated, but could see little reason to keep it a secret. "He’s undernourished as well. It’s been a while since he’s fed on anything."

McCullum gave a bitter laugh. "I bet you took care of that."

"Of course. It’s my duty as a physician and as his friend. And I’ll note that you don’t exactly look famished yourself."

"That’s none of your business."

"No," Edgar agreed. "It is of course a private matter. I won’t pry."

McCullum let out a huff of irritation, then relented, passing a hand over his face.

"Shall we take a walk?" Edgar suggested, and McCullum eyed him, scowling darkly. But when Edgar moved away from the house, he followed. "It’s a beautiful estate. My parents brought me here to visit as a boy. A shame we can’t see it in the daytime."

McCullum grunted. Clearly not in the mood to reminisce, but Edgar could sense him growing tenser as they moved from the lawn to the gardens behind the back of the house to the rose garden. He shifted uneasily, sensing as Edgar did the feeling that they were not welcome there.

The natural world exerted its own repulsion, similar to religious iconography, crosses, holy water and the like. Even as little as standing in the shadow of a church could be an unnerving sensation. The natural world had the same effect.

Edgar thought of it as rather like being an unwelcome, uninvited guest at a party with irritated hosts who were determined to save face and be polite in the hopes that you’d leave of your own accord: the trick was to be obtuse and pretend you hadn’t noticed.

This spot by the pond on the edge of the rose gardens was his favourite part of the whole estate. The estate’s hot houses had been given over to food production, but the rose garden had escaped, and he was thankful for that. In the cool of night the heady sweet smell was dimmed but still powerful, skirting the edge of being overwhelming. He could smell each distinct breed of rose, their scents twining together into a sweet perfume.

McCullum stood at the edge of the pond, staring down at his indistinct reflection as if it was the first time he’d ever seen it. Edgar had meant to unnerve him by coming here, and it had succeeded.

"I used to breed roses," Edgar told him. "Before I came to the Pembroke of course. Not many gardens in Whitechapel."

"Why does that not surprise me?" McCullum glanced up, the muscles in his jaw clenching. "What’s he told you, Swansea? About the time he was away. The people he killed."

"We don’t know any of it’s true. Not yet. It could all prove to be nothing more than rumour and conjecture. A case of mistaken identity, or another rogue Ekon at large."

"Is that what he claims?"

"He hasn’t said anything at all yet." Edgar hesitated. "He doesn’t seem to remember."

"That’s convenient."

"As it happens, I believe him. I’m sure more will come to him as he recovers, and we’ll be in a better position to understand the truth. What I am certain of is that he hasn’t fed for a long time which rather suggests he hasn’t been gorging himself on innocent lives for the last couple of decades." Edgar studied him curiously. "How did you know, may I ask? You’re no longer a member of the Guard of Priwen."

"I still have some contacts."

"And are these contacts aware of who and what you really are?" Edgar asked. McCullum glared, and Edgar held up his hand. "There’s really no need to smoulder at me, McCullum. I’m merely curious. May I ask what exactly your mysterious contacts have told you about Jonathan?" He did his best to keep his voice casual, no hint of anxiety, no quiver of fear of what McCullum might say.

"The same as you. An Ekon who leaves death in his wake, and whose description sounds one hell of a lot like Jonathan Reid. If I had to put money on it, I’d swear it was him. But what do I know? I’m only the man who used to hunt leeches for a living."

Edgar was silent for a long time. The scent of the rose garden seemed cloying now. "It’s still not proof."

"Who are you trying to convince?"

"No one." _Yet_. "I’m merely suggesting that we ascertain the facts before we go thundering in like bulls in a china shop and smash everything to smithereens. Agreed?"

He nodded. Just once, with a jerk of his head that seemed unnecessarily grudging. "And if everything I’ve heard is true?"

"That," Edgar said with a sigh, "is a bridge that we have yet to cross. I’m by no means convinced that this shadowy Ekon is Jonathan, or, if it was, the full extent of his depredations."

McCullum snorted. "’Depredations.’ That’s a polite word for a massacre."

"There’s also the question of whether he can be held fully accountable for his actions. You must have felt the hunger, McCullum. I think it’s in all of us, the potential for blood-madness–"

His expression darkened. "You’re saying that if a leech murders someone it’s not fully accountable? What would you have us do, Swansea, build a sanatorium for them? Feed them blood and let them go free when you judge them sufficiently redeemed? They’re killers."

"Oh, and you’re not?" Edgar snapped. McCullum fell silent, eyes dark. "Don’t think I haven’t forgotten what you did to me. You abducted and tortured me, McCullum, or had you forgotten that? You and your thugs left me to die. My blood would have been on your hands if it hadn’t been for Jonathan–"

"He gave you a choice. It was more than he gave me."

"You and your thugs stormed a hospital. A bloody hospital, which ought to have been as good as sacred ground. So let’s not pretend your hands are clean in this matter. Jonathan saved us all. You ought to be throwing yourself at his feet and begging his forgiveness."

"It’ll be a cold day in hell when _that_ happens!"

They glared at each other, each too furious to speak.

To Edgar’s surprise, it was McCullum who looked away first. He brought his hands up to his face and rubbed furiously at it, then without looking held his hand up, palm out in an unwilling gesture of contrition. Not an apology, but Edgar wouldn’t have expected one from him.

"One of these days," Edgar said, "we’ll meet up without having a perfectly pleasant conversation turn into an argument."

He scoffed. "You have a strange idea of ‘perfectly pleasant’, Swansea."

"We should be natural allies, you and I. The Brotherhood and Priwen only ever wanted the same thing. We just disagreed over the best way to go about it. But even the most vehement disagreements can be mended." Edgar drew a breath. "You do know the Brotherhood would always–"

"No."

"You didn’t let me finish."

"I don’t need to. I know what you’re going to say. I’ll never join the Brotherhood, Swansea. I’d rather join _Ascalon_. At least they’re honest about what they are."

"I’m not sure Ascalon would have you."

"They’re not fools. I’d bring down that shower of English bastards the first chance I got."

Edgar glanced towards the horizon which was lightening to a soft indigo. "You’d best go. It’s almost dawn."

"You’ll be seeing me soon."

"I look forward to it," Edgar said, and as McCullum started away, he called after him. "By the way, McCullum, I don’t suppose you have any spare clothes Jonathan could borrow? If he ever had a ration book then goodness knows where it’s gone, and nothing of mine will fit him."

McCullum glowered at him. "Do I look like the Salvation Army, Swansea?"

"I take it that’s a no."

Without another word, he turned, his coat sweeping out behind him, and then he was gone, dissolving into shadow. For a puritanical vampire hunter, Geoffrey McCullum certainly had a taste for unnecessarily showy theatrics.


	3. Three

**Three**

 

McCullum had vanished so completely Edgar couldn’t even have guessed where he’d gone, and he was left with the lingering fear that the vampire hunter might have doubled back and returned to the cottage ahead of him. But the house was silent, no different than when Edgar had left it, and when he glanced into the spare room, he found Jonathan still asleep, so silent that had Edgar not possessed the senses of an immortal, he might have taken him for a corpse. Jonathan lay on his front, sprawled across the single bed, arms reaching up to wrap around the pillow.

Edgar was hesitating, uncertain whether to wake him, or if it would be wiser to let him sleep, when he sensed, for the second time that night, a shift in the air and realised he was being watched.

Jonathan’s eyes were open. He was finally awake, and watchful. "Was there something you wanted, Edgar?" he murmured into the pillow.

"McCullum knows you’re here."

Jonathan groaned, rolled over onto his back, and clapped his hand over his eyes.

"Goodness knows how," Edgar continued. "He’s no longer in the Guard of Priwen, hasn’t been for quite some time. The last I’d heard of him he’d returned to Ireland..." _You’re babbling, Edgar._

"He does seem to make a habit of finding me," Jonathan said grimly.

"This time he already knew you were here. He came here looking for you." At this, Jonathan dropped his hand and stared. "Before you ask, I don’t know how he knew. Perhaps whatever force brought you here to me brought him too." Edgar laughed shakily. "Almost a reunion of sorts, isn’t it? I’m expecting Sean soon too."

"Sean Hampton? I thought he’d never leave the docks."

"I don’t think he would have, had he the choice. His shelter was evacuated early in the war, and the entire Dawson building was destroyed in an air raid last year. There was nothing left of it but smoking rubble. I believe these days he volunteers for the Red Cross."

"Does he know I’m here?"

"I don’t see how he could." Although Edgar would have said the same thing about McCullum had he been asked before this evening. And he’d sensed Jonathan was close by too, hadn’t he? _Something_ had drawn him out to hunt that night. "It’s me he’s coming to see. An… arrangement we have."

"What sort of arrangement?"

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I give him donations of my blood on a regular basis."

Jonathan stiffened, his expression darkening with distrust. When he spoke his voice held a light brittle tone, an undercurrent of warning. "And he takes it? That doesn’t sound like the Sean Hampton I remember. He was quite firm about refusing, the last time I offered."

"It isn’t for him. Or at least… not entirely. It was Bridget’s idea... and really, I’m so pleased you met her, Jonathan. She’s a remarkable creature, and a Skal to boot..." Edgar caught the look Jonathan was giving him and chuckled weakly. "I keep half the Skals in London from going feral. It’s a good job Ekon blood doesn’t have the same entrancing effect on Skals as it does on newborns and mortals, or else I might have an entire army of savage vampires at my beck and call!"

Jonathan rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Dear God."

"The effect isn’t permanent, although I have a theory that by direct transfusion of enough Ekon blood into a feral Skal it might be possible to return them to a lucid civilised state. Unfortunately the amount of blood it would take is substantial, more than I alone could provide, and feral Skals tend to be less than cooperative. Still, imagine if we could pull it off."

"Edgar..."

Already on edge, Edgar found himself prickling. "You don’t need to scold me. You did exactly the same thing to Sean Hampton with no ill effects. I’m only–"

Jonathan caught hold of his wrist. "That wasn’t what I was going to say."

"No?"

"No. I was going to ask what McCullum wanted. Not that your theories about feral Skals aren’t fascinating, but the presence of a vampire hunter with good reason to hate me does seem rather more pressing, wouldn’t you say? Could he have come here to kill me?"

"He might have told himself that, but I don’t think he could actually do it," Edgar said. "It’s a curious thing, the pull you have on us. You never felt it yourself when you met your Maker?"

Jonathan shook his head. "I suppose I was drawn to him, but I always felt I retained free will." He raised an eyebrow. "So, if I asked you, begged you, even, to put me out of my misery–"

"You’re asking the wrong person, Jonathan. But no, even if I wanted to, I doubt I would be able to do it, and I suspect nor could McCullum, although I’m certain he’d swear otherwise. We do have a way of lying to ourselves, don’t we? Probably better not to tempt fate though."

Jonathan’s hand was still gripping Edgar’s arm, and his nail scratched lightly at the wrist. "Is that why you gave me your blood? Out of a need to please me?"

"Goodness me, no." Although that wasn’t entirely the whole truth. "Well... perhaps a little. But I wanted to, I assure you."

"How can you be certain?" His voice lowered a couple of octaves, no longer hoarse, but deep and rich as hot chocolate, the stuff that couldn’t be got for love nor money these days, and which Edgar could no longer drink in any case. "How do you know that I’m not manipulating you even now?"

Edgar closed his eyes. The words seemed drawn from him, as though he’d lost all control over his own speech. "Because I remember what you meant to me when I was alive."

"Which was?" He knew. Edgar was certain of that, but Jonathan seemed intent on dragging it out of him anyway. He murmured Edgar’s name when he didn’t answer, and Edgar opened his eyes and met his gaze with a look that was about as steady as he could make it. "Oh," Jonathan said, slowly, dangerously, not with the anger or shock or disgust Edgar had feared, but something closer to amused indulgence. As if he’d already known. As if he only ever had to look at Edgar to know. " _Oh_."

Jonathan rose to his knees. He curled his other hand around the back of Edgar's head and clasped him close, drawing his face to the hollow of his throat, where Jonathan's skin ran warm with the blood that coursed beneath it. Edgar’s lips were already peeling back. Jonathan’s fingers burrowed into his hair, while he brought his mouth to Edgar’s ear, nipping at the lobe.

"Are you hungry, Edgar?"

That _voice_ . It wasn’t compulsion, yet it had an echo, as if Edgar was hearing his words in his head a fraction of a second before Jonathan spoke them. And he was hungry, hungrier than he’d ever felt in his life; every cell in his body craved blood, and not just any blood, but Jonathan’s. Their hearts pulsed in time, beating in a slow stately unison. Jonathan released his wrist, and Edgar pressed his hand between his shoulder blades as Jonathan ripped at the buttons of his shirt. He slid his hand over Edgar's chest, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks without breaking the skin, then down to where Edgar’s erection swelled and stiffened at the promise of his Maker’s touch with an urgent hunger of its own, and: _Ah_ , Edgar thought, distant and a little giddy, _so that’s where all my blood went._

Jonathan snorted and Edgar realised, cheeks heating, that either he’d spoken aloud without realising, or Jonathan had heard him through some vestige of the link between them. Then Jonathan was wrenching at the fastenings of Edgar’s trousers, roughly enough to rip the wool.

"Steady on," Edgar managed to protest, because while he might be capable of replacing a few shirt buttons, repairing a trouser fly would be quite beyond his limited skills with a needle, but even that worry was swept away as Jonathan grasped his shaft, and exerted pressure on the back of his head, urging him to bite. Edgar gave a choked gasp as his will caved in and he bit into Jonathan’s throat.

He’d forgotten. He wasn’t sure how, since there were some nights when it was all he could think about, but he’d forgotten. The sheer pleasure of it. Jonathan’s blood flooded his mouth, and he was lost to the taste and to the sensations, clawing at Jonathan’s back as his Maker's fist slid along his shaft, each stroke hard and unforgiving.

And then Jonathan released him. Edgar groaned into his throat with a guttural protest, thrusting his hips towards Jonathan’s hand in a wordless plea. His jaw clenched involuntarily. Jonathan reached up and tore him away, the flesh ripping between his teeth with a fresh spurt of blood that Edgar tasted for a brief maddening instant before he was shoved away and not gently. He fell back on the bed, gasping for breath, wanting only _more._

Jonathan touched his hand to the already healing bite in his neck, glanced at the blood on his palm with a hard angry smile, then smeared it deliberately over his chest, a scarlet slash of gore that arced down to where his erection was constricted by his underwear.

He came closer and brought that hand to Edgar’s cheek, caressing it almost tenderly. Edgar turned his head to touch his lips to the hollow of the palm and tasted the blood on his tongue, then Jonathan kissed him without warning, hard and brutal, sucking the taste of it from Edgar’s lips and tongue.

He wedged his leg between Edgar’s, grinding the urgent pressure of his erection against his thigh. Edgar kissed his neck, felt his body go taut above him in caution, in warning, as if he expected to be bitten again. Edgar met his gaze and licked at the blood smeared on his skin, ran his hands over Jonathan’s shoulder blades and down his spine. Gripped his backside with both hands, and pulled him close, rutting up against him until Jonathan gave a sharp hiss and rolled away, jerking at his underwear.

He gave a look as good as an order, and Edgar was doing the same, stripping off the rest of his clothes and resisting the urge to glance at the fly of his trousers to make sure the damage was repairable. When he looked back at the bed, Jonathan was naked and waiting, his hand clasped loosely around the base of his shaft. Edgar exhaled sharply at the sight.

He knelt on the mattress, unsure what to do, where to start. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to kiss Jonathan, so he did, running his hand down Jonathan’s forearm to join his hand around his shaft, fingers entwining with his. And then kissing didn’t seem like quite enough, and he was following the trail of blood downwards, while fingers tangled in his hair, exerting a gentle but insistent pressure. Edgar took the head of Jonathan’s cock into his mouth, and Jonathan pressed back against the bed with a throaty groan, his hands in Edgar’s hair a little more forceful now as Edgar curled his tongue around the head. The silken skin of the shaft was so thin he could sense the thrum of the blood beneath, could taste it, in fact.

Breath ragged, Edgar pulled back, his own erection urgent. He wrapped his hand around Jonathan's shaft, the skin slipping back and forth with every stroke, as he brought his mouth down to the balls, tormented by the mingled scents of musk and blood and sweat and seed. Jonathan groaned as he sucked at them gently, first one, then the other, his palm cupped around the head of the cock. And back he went to the shaft again, trailing his tongue along the delicate veins along its length, feeling the rhythmic pulse of the blood as a quiver against his tongue.

It was too much.

He set his lips against the shaft with a gentle suction, and then, groaning, with a not quite so gentle suction, teeth prickling. The barrier between him and the blood was too thin, too fragile, and it was all he could smell. Jonathan gave a warning growl deep in his throat, his fingers tightening. Then, when Edgar didn’t react, didn’t move, every muscle locked and quivering, Jonathan murmured his name, and Edgar couldn’t tell, as intent on feeding as he was, how Jonathan sounded, whether the tone in his voice was one of anger or warning or amusement. Perhaps all three. All Edgar knew was _him_.

Jonathan shifted position, bending one leg, and with a twist of his fingers in Edgar’s hair, directed him towards his inner thigh. Edgar didn’t need much urging to bite down, and drank, catching Jonathan’s cock between his palm and his cheek as he swallowed greedily.

Then Jonathan shifted, moving out from underneath him. This time he had no need to rip Edgar away. He fell away willingly as Jonathan caught his jaw and pulled him into a fierce open-mouthed kiss. Edgar looked down and the sight of Jonathan’s blood-smeared erection trapped between them was quite possibly the most erotic sight he’d ever seen.

He bent his head and took Jonathan in his mouth again, closing his eyes, because the blood was so bright it was searing and it was all he could see. Jonathan sank back, first to his haunches, then to his backside, fumbling for Edgar’s erection. Edgar groaned in pleasure, but he couldn’t have said what he took more pleasure from, whether it was the feel of Jonathan’s hand working at him, or the taste of blood and the first fleeting trace of semen on the back of his tongue.

The posture was awkward and Jonathan’s grip on Edgar’s shaft grew less practised as he began to lose control, his hips bucking upwards. Edgar reached down, curled his hand around Jonathan's slack fingers. He pumped a few times, his breath panting around Jonathan’s cock as he masturbated himself through the other man’s grip, until Jonathan’s hand caught around his and jerked it upwards. Away.

Without warning, he bit down hard on Edgar’s wrist.

Edgar gasped, part pleasure, part protest that his own erection was now being ignored, but the sensation of Jonathan drinking from his wrist was almost enough to make up for that. Jonathan’s fingers tightened on his arm, hot saliva mingling with his blood and dripping down to the crook of his elbow and spilling over Jonathan’s lips and cheeks. Edgar felt a brief flash of alarm for the state of the sheets, which was forgotten in the instant before Jonathan spent, every muscle taut and rigid, the fluttering pulse in his cock, the momentary lull before the storm, before the briny taste of semen filled Edgar’s mouth, sharp and salty-sweet. It tasted a little of iron.

Jonathan gasped, recovering, his hand so tightly knitted in Edgar’s hair it hurt. His grip eased. His clamped jaw opened.

Edgar felt his hot breath on his wrist, a teasing flicker of a tongue against his forearm, then the full flat of it as Jonathan lapped at him. Then Jonathan twisted his head to stare hungrily at him and his eyes were so flooded with blood they almost looked black, and Edgar didn’t have to see his reflection clearly to know his were identical. The two of them were very nearly sated, drunk on blood and pleasure and the promise of further pleasure, and he felt a sharp desire to simply spend the rest of their days like this, as if such would be sufficient to satisfy them. It couldn’t be, of course, but he knew they wouldn’t have been the first Ekons to try. It usually ended badly.

Edgar’s erection nudged urgently against his belly as he moved over Jonathan. A hot droplet of blood dribbled down his wrist, as he swallowed down the salt-iron taste of semen and kissed his own blood from Jonathan’s chin, his cheeks, his beard, while Jonathan’s softening cock pressed sticky-wet against Edgar’s thigh. Edgar straddled his leg and Jonathan’s hands curled around his backside, the fingers twining between his buttocks. One worked its way into his arse while he pulled Edgar suddenly hard against him, and with a roll of his hips ground against his erection.

They kissed, tasting each other, spit and seed and blood, and Edgar’s moans of pleasure were swallowed up by the kiss. The finger probing relentlessly inside him was slick with fluid, saliva or blood, and Edgar thought, in the moment before he came, of Usher Talltree, his eyes hidden behind smoked lenses, murmuring so softly, _Does he whisper to you like a lover when you lay your head down?_

Well, he was doing a damn sight more than whispering now.

 

* * *

 

"Have you told the Brotherhood I’m here?"

Jonathan was sitting with his back against the bedstead, Edgar’s head pillowed on his lap and Jonathan’s fingers in his hair, working in lazy circles. A curiously tender caress. The air seemed coloured with the scent of iron and seed, and Edgar found the smell, and the strange cool weight and strength of the body behind him, comforting.

He’d asked the question gently, without even the slightest hint of accusation, and even so Edgar hesitated. In the long period while Jonathan had been sleeping, Edgar had composed several letters, all of which he’d burnt, certain that Jonathan would wake up and everything would become clear. He’d finally woken up all right, but if anything matters had got slightly murkier. Certainly more complicated, anyway. "Not yet."

"But you will."

"I have to, Jonathan. It’s for the best. You can’t evade them for ever, and I know I certainly can’t. Most likely Talltree already knows you’re in England. And if that’s so, it won’t be long before he looks my way. The sooner they know you’re here, the sooner we can get this awful situation straightened out."

"Do they know where I’ve been?"

"They have an idea. They do their best to keep track of the immortals they’ve had dealings with. But you have been evasive, Jonathan, there’s no doubt about that."

"Evasive," he repeated. "You make it sound like something I did on purpose."

"Wasn’t it?"

Jonathan glanced down at him. Not the most flattering angle. With his bloodied eyes and the drying crimson smeared upon his skin, he looked inhuman and monstrous, yet oddly vulnerable for all of that. When he didn't answer, Edgar reached up to touch his cheek.

"You lost yourself, Jonathan," he said softly. "Just for a little while. It happens to us all, but you’re back now."

Jonathan turned his head to kiss Edgar’s fingers.

Edgar closed his eyes and took a breath. For a moment, he was back there, in the squalid back room of the theatre where he’d almost died, his body broken and throbbing with pain, gripped by the certain knowledge that he was dying. Would ignorance of his injuries have made that moment better or worse?

A funny thing though: up until that moment the thought of the dark shadowed doorway that awaited him had always filled him with dread. It was the same door through which he’d watched his father recede, much-wasted and shrunken with the illness that had slowly leached away his life and spirit, but when Edgar’s moment finally came, he’d felt nothing but peace and gratitude that Jonathan was there with him. If he was going to die at least it wouldn’t be alone. He’d had only two regrets: that he hadn’t quite achieved everything he wanted to in his life and that he would die with a man he dearly cared for so furious at him.

"I never did apologise to you, did I?" he said.

"For what?"

"Please, Jonathan. You know very well. For Harriet Jones."

"Ah." Jonathan closed his eyes, touched his fingers to the spot above his brow as if the headache had returned. As if Edgar were the cause of it.

"I had my reasons at the time. I thought myself justified. And when you found me in that awful room…"

"It was a long time ago, Edgar. And you were dying."

Edgar didn’t like the sound of his voice when he said that, distant and speculative, like someone turning something they have no opinion of over in their mind. Testing out different reactions. As if the deaths Edgar had inadvertently been the cause of, not to mention Jonathan’s fury at his lapse in ethics, were all theoretical. As though Jonathan no longer cared.

Horror bubbled up, making his own confession all the more painful. He needled at that horror, wanting his emotions to bleed into Jonathan’s the way his bled into Edgar’s. He wanted Jonathan to feel what he felt.

"I didn’t understand it then," Edgar continued. "Nor after. Not for a long time. It was… It’s almost like being drunk, those first few months. It was only after you’d gone that it began to seep through, little things at first, and then..." He closed his eyes, his words growing shaky as his throat tightened up. The covers rustled as Jonathan bent down to kiss him, cupping his cheek.

"It’s done, Edgar," he said, and thank God but the flat emotionless tone in his voice was gone. He almost sounded angry. "It’s over. Harriet Jones is dead, the epidemic long since forgotten. Was your behaviour unethical? Of course, but I hardly think that _I_ , of all people, am in the best position to judge."

Edgar fumbled for his hand, squeezed it, brought it to his lips. "You’re the best of us, Jonathan. You always were."

He didn’t smile. "I’m not sure that’s saying much. We’re selfish creatures, we Ekon. None of us can help our natures for long."

"You don’t really mean that," Edgar said, although he’d seen it for himself. Lady Ashbury, adopting her daughter on a whim, raising her as her own then abandoning her at the drop of a hat, with less regard than most people paid to a household pet. Edgar was certain Lady Ashbury thought it for the best at the time, but the blinding selfishness of the act still astonished him even now. Jonathan had been the same way with his mother. Aside from the butler, Edgar had been the only mourner at the funeral.

Was selfishness a kind of instinct designed for self-preservation, necessary in a species doomed to seeing its mortal loved ones wither and die? Something they could fight no more than a shell-shocked soldier could help his nerves or an alcoholic could control his need for drink? A kind of madness in its own way, making even the most cold-hearted act seem rational? Edgar wondered.

Jonathan closed his eyes and lay down, the mattress springs protesting beneath their combined weights. They rolled into each other, Jonathan’s leg hooking over Edgar’s. Edgar was beginning to wonder if it was time for him to return to his own room when Jonathan spoke again. "If it’s forgiveness you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place."

Edgar went still, his mouth dry, but Jonathan wasn’t quite done.

"I forgave you a long time ago, my friend."

Edgar wrapped his arms around him, aware of the pounding of his heart, aware too that Jonathan must have sensed it and known something of what it meant. Jonathan’s breathing slowed as he began to fall asleep – he was both a doctor and a soldier and had the knack of being able to fall asleep anywhere and at a moment’s notice, but it was not a talent Edgar had ever managed to develop. He wasn’t sure whether he should slip back to his own room and give Jonathan some space to sleep and heal, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to move. Not with the weight of Jonathan’s arm draped over him, keeping him pinned in place.

Between them lingered the unspoken question, ‘where have you been?’ which he was afraid to ask again, and he was no longer certain if he was afraid to ask it because Jonathan might still not know the answer, or because Edgar was afraid that he _did_.

 

* * *

 

For a while, it was almost like being freshly turned again, the thrill of his sharpened senses. It was as if he could feel every inch of his skin and more besides, right up to the very end of every pricked-up hair on his body. Even the muted colours of his twilight world seemed as bright and clamorous as a garden at the height of a summer’s day. Every note of the music on the wireless perfection, as though he’d travelled across the airwaves and sat in the studio with the musicians.

Jonathan was getting stronger, and at times seemed free of the ghosts that had haunted him for as long as Edgar had known him, as though they’d finally all been exorcised.

Since he was still healing, and nowhere near back to normal, Edgar made the decision to up their rations – a doctor’s prerogative – and draw some blood from some of the stronger patients so as not to over-tax the nurses.

No clothes materialised from McCullum, so he also took it upon himself to requisition some clothes from Lord Acton’s wardrobe, which at least fit Jonathan reasonably well in the waist, although the tweed hunting jacket was far too short in the arms. From the doorway, Edgar watched Jonathan study himself before his indistinct reflection, tugging down the sleeves as though they could be persuaded to lengthen themselves through the sheer force of his will. Edgar was thinking idly that if he had been a tweed jacket he would have obeyed.

"Will you be honest with me, Edgar?"

"Always."

Jonathan glanced up, frowning. "Exactly how ridiculous do I look?"

"Everybody looks a little shabby these days. You’re the height of fashion."

"Hmm." His frown deepened, and then relented without warning. He cast Edgar a brief smile that made his already quivery little heart leap. "I suppose I shall have to take your word for it."

It was a side of Jonathan Edgar had only seen once and very briefly; before the Great War, he’d seen Jonathan deep in discussion with another of the doctors attending his lectures. That Jonathan had been charmingly self-deprecating and quick to smile, a man who had surveyed the life ahead of him and looked forward to discovering what path he would take, a man who was wealthy, brilliant and blessed. Whether it was his experiences in the war or death itself that had changed him, Edgar supposed he’d never know, but whatever it was had changed him so utterly that when Edgar came to meet Jonathan again in the docklands of London he couldn’t be quite certain it was him.

Only now, when they were together once more and freed of the relentless pressure of the epidemic and the ruthless threat of Priwen, was Edgar seeing more than glimpses of the brilliant blessed man that Jonathan had once been. And when Jonathan turned the full force of his charm on him, it was entrancing. Like the sun, he dazzled.

Edgar was dazzled by him.

But like any summer sky there were always clouds, moments when Jonathan would seem distant and not himself, and worse, moments when the memory of red eyes in the darkness rose up in Edgar’s mind and he could not shake the unnerving thought that Jonathan had a taste for his blood now. Moments when Jonathan’s mask of charm seemed to drop, and the monster he was underneath could be seen.

But then again, didn’t everyone have a monster hiding inside them? Edgar certainly did.

What was worse was that the voice in Edgar’s head had gone silent, the voice that had spoken to him for so long that it seemed almost a part of him. Even though Jonathan slept beside him at night, a solid presence that was always comforting, except for the times when it _wasn’t_. He was with Edgar more than ever, Jonathan’s mouth on his lips, his skin, his cock, bringing him to a wordless gasping pleasure, while his fingers eased inside him, a teasing prelude before they were followed with his cock.

He was with Edgar in a way he’d never been before, and still it felt like being abandoned all over again.

 

* * *

 

Edgar had never once regretted the choice he made.

How could he? It was something that had both thrilled and terrified him as a boy, to know that creatures such as vampires existed, and that he was only one amongst a limited number of mortals privy to such a closely guarded secret.

It was a choice he had longed for all his life, and when the only alternative was death it was no choice at all. Jonathan offered him a new world, a new life, an infinite number of second chances. And in return what he was giving up seemed so trifling in comparison: direct sunlight, cigarettes, mortal food and drink. Not much else. He’d already resigned himself to a life as a bachelor, and even there he now had a second chance, with the opportunity to create progeny of his own. A thrilling and dizzying thought.

Admittedly, Edgar did quite miss smoking, but he had only one true regret – and perhaps Jonathan was right about the inherent selfishness of Ekons since it would have had no effect on his decision. It broke his mother’s heart.

She knew what he was at once. She’d been brought up amongst the Brotherhood; Edgar’s grandfather had been the Primate before Usher Talltree took the position, and she knew how to recognise an Ekon.

It was a strange experience returning to the house where he’d grown up, the gardens his mother delighted in now as threatening as the brambles around Rapunzel’s tower that scratched out the prince’s eyes. And of course, he tried to enter the house, and found that he could not. He was not welcome in his own mother’s house, the very house where he’d been born, no less. He laughed it off, but even so it came as quite a shock. Although not nearly as much of a shock as when his mother saw him, and knew in an instant what he had become.

Her face paled as though she’d seen a ghost, and she staggered back, her knuckles pressed to her lips. Already ageing and unsteady on her feet, she lost her balance. He tried to move forwards to catch her and the unseen barrier hardened against him, an unseen pane of glass across the threshold. He could do nothing to help her, nothing but watch the rapid beat of her heart as she recovered from the shock.

"Oh God," she whispered, "not you, Edgar. Not you."

She invited him in in the end, although it took quite some persuasion on his part. It was quite a chilly night and by the end he was almost testy, with the temptation to compel her growing stronger by the minute. He could have made her. He was glad he didn’t.

They sat in the parlour and he was quite certain she was convinced he was going to fall on her like a ravening beast at any moment and drain her dry, even as he explained how his vampirism had come about – although naturally he left out the part about being tortured to the brink of death – and about the vampires whose acquaintances he had made, notably Lady Elisabeth Ashbury and his own dear Maker, Jonathan Reid. Neither of them killers, he stressed, although he wasn’t entirely certain she believed him.

She was gone now. In the end, it had been a bout of pneumonia that took her. At her bed he considered making her the offer that Jonathan had made him, but mothers can read their children’s minds. She fixed him with that ‘don’t you dare, Edgar’ look, the one she used so often when he was a child considering mischief, and so he kept silent. Probably for the best. This wasn’t a life that suited everyone, but he hoped she came to understand it was a life that suited him very much. He hoped she was happy for him, even if it had been the last path she ever would have taken.

 

* * *

 

Edgar drove in near total darkness, the headlights of the car masked except for the thinnest crescent sliver of light. Sean Hampton was waiting for him, leaning against the side of a van, the reek of death clinging to him. Not rot, but something mustier, and not entirely unpleasant. The years hadn’t been kind to him. There was an unhealthy grey pallor to his skin, which was a little more eaten away by decay, and his hair was streaked with white, but his grip was strong when he shook Edgar’s hand.

They aged, the Skals, when Ekons did not. Both species of vampire inhabited some strange twilight world between life and death, but they were as distinct from each other as they were from mortals. No one knew for certain if Skals were immortal, or if they remained mortal with unnaturally extended lifespans. No one had ever bothered to find out, and Edgar found that baffling. He couldn’t imagine how anyone with a scientific bent could spend any length of time around such remarkable creatures as Sean and Old Bridget and not be fascinated by them, and so it was an endless source of frustration to him that both rebuffed his experimental overtures, gently but firmly.

Bridget in particular enthralled him. She was as fierce as a lioness in protecting the lesser Skals in her petty queendom, forbidding any tests she deemed overly invasive. She knew something about how Harriet Jones had come to be infected, and while she was a woman of grace and forgiveness and had never said anything to Edgar, she’d made it clear she would not tolerate him overstepping his bounds with the Skals under her protection.

He knew better than to push his luck.

He exchanged the usual pleasantries with Sean, but the Skal was as perceptive as ever. Once the transaction was done, they leaned on the bonnet of Edgar’s car and stared out over the field, the flashing bobbing tails of rabbits seeming very bright in the moonlight.

"Is something wrong, Dr Swansea?"

"Jonathan’s back."

Sean nodded. "I thought I smelled him on you," he said, and Edgar had to fight to keep an expression of alarm from his face. "How is he?"

"As well as can be expected." Edgar flexed his hand, wishing for a cigarette to cover his nerves. "He was attacked by some Skals."

"There's not enough blood in the world to keep us all fed, Dr Swansea." He studied Edgar. "That’s not all though, is it? You’re worried about him."

"Of course I’m worried about him. Jonathan is a very dear friend."

"Ah, but what is it exactly that you’re worried about. Are you frightened for him, or _of_ him?"

Had it been any other man asking that question, Edgar would have lied.

"Honestly, Sean, I really don’t know." A truth he had barely been able to admit even to himself, yet Sean Hampton managed to coax it out with nothing but a quiet gentle nature that belied the core of steel and determination that lay within him. He waited, patient as a priest waiting to receive the confession of a penitent sinner, but Edgar had no confession to make, only his own doubts. "May I ask you a question?"

"By all means, Doctor."

"I do wish you’d call me Edgar." No response, only his patient look, his sad eyes watching. "Have you heard anything of Jonathan in the past twenty-five years?"

"Not a thing."

"Nothing at all? Not so much as a rumour? Or his voice in your head?"

Sean gave a hard smile, watery eyes glittering. "I wouldn’t let Jonathan Reid into my head, Dr Swansea. Not in a month of Sundays."

Edgar sighed, tapping his hand against his upper thigh. "He was in America for a while," he said, "So I’ve heard, although I should stress I have no idea if the rumours are true."

"Well, now, if you did, you wouldn’t be so worried, would you?"

"America. At the height of the Depression. Seven people were slaughtered by an Ekon in one of those Hooverville shanty towns. They were just the ones who were killed outright. Many more were bitten, and then of course came the inevitable outbreak of Skals. And it wasn’t the only attack. There have been more." Many, many more over the years.

"And you’ve heard that was Dr Reid?"

"An English vampire. Distinctive features. Dark beard."

"That could describe an awful lot of men, Dr Swansea. Do you really believe it’s him?"

"The Brotherhood of St Paul’s Stole do."

"But you don’t agree."

Edgar was silent for a few moments. "In all the time I knew him, aside from his sister, and when she died he was frightened and tormented by hunger, Jonathan never took a single life, save in self-defence." He considered McCullum, and grimaced, deciding that probably counted as self-defence too. "I struggle to believe he’s capable of such a thing."

"We’re all capable of terrible things, Dr Swansea."

That was not what Edgar had wanted to hear him say. He turned towards Sean, stricken. "You believe he did it?"

"I didn’t say that, now. The thing is, Doctor, I don’t thirst, not the unrelenting way you do. I haven’t had to bear that burden for a very long time thanks to the generosity of you and Dr Reid and your communion _wine_..." He glanced back towards where Edgar’s carefully wrapped donation sat in the passenger seat of his van. The flicker of disgust on his face was the first crack in his serene facade.

“An interesting take on transubstantiation,” Edgar said, and Sean smiled gently, turning back to him.

"My point, Dr Swansea, is that I’ve seen others of my kind, whom I know to be good people, decent people, succumb. It still doesn’t make them evil. ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’"

"’Red like crimson’. That seems appropriate," Edgar murmured. "Isaiah?"

"It is indeed, Doctor."

"’And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.’"

"So try washing your hands then." Sean slapped Edgar’s back. "Have a little faith, Dr Swansea. It seems like you already know the Bible well enough. Maybe you should take more notice of it. And give my regards to Dr Reid."

 

* * *

 

Once again, it was Geoffrey McCullum who acted as the catalyst and changed everything between them. Part of Edgar was hoping McCullum wouldn’t come back, but he’d knew in his heart that he would – he had as much unfinished business with Jonathan as Edgar had. McCullum would be back just like he promised. What Edgar wasn’t expecting was for him to bother knocking.

McCullum came advancing into the house with a dark expression, shoving past Edgar into the parlour where Jonathan sat, lifting his head from a battered copy of Agatha Christie’s _Sad Cypress_.

"Good evening, McCullum. How is life as a creature of the night treating you these days?"

"How do you think? I’ve watched everyone I know and love – the ones that were left anyway – grow old and die. I’m damned, Reid. And you’re the one that damned me."

Jonathan closed the book and laid it on the table, never taking his gaze from McCullum. "Edgar, would you give us a minute in private?"

Edgar shifted, uncomfortable with the thought of leaving them together, but the temperature seemed to have plunged several degrees and it almost came as a relief to escape from that room and out into the night.

He took a walk around the estate gardens and eventually found himself at the edge of the rose garden, and it was there that McCullum found him some half an hour later. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to smell of blood and slaughter.

"Well, McCullum?" Edgar called to him, "Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?"

No answer, and when Edgar glanced at him, McCullum seemed at a loss for what must have felt like the first time in his life. Just as Edgar was starting to think McCullum wasn’t going to answer him at all he scowled and spat out, "He said he was _sorry_." He almost looked offended. "He asked for my forgiveness _._ "

"Not what you were expecting?"

His scowl deepened, his hands flexing into fists. "I came here thinking I was going to have to kill him. I wanted to kill him, Swansea. He stole everything from me."

"That’s one way to look at it."

"It’s the _only_ way to look at it."

Edgar sighed. "As much as I relish crossing wits with you, McCullum, I'm afraid I'm too tired to argue tonight. Did you tell him about the rogue Ekon?"

"I had to–"

"No, no, I’m glad you did. I ought to have told him myself, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do it. It’s for the best." So why then did he feel so afraid? "You said you came here to kill him. Why didn’t you?"

He glanced around, searching through the darkness for the house. Searching, Edgar thought, for Jonathan. "Because," he said slowly, "because I don’t believe for a second that it was really him."

Edgar exhaled sharply, the painful knot in his throat audible in his voice. "You believe he’s innocent."

"None of us are innocent, Swansea, least of all Reid. But the stories I’ve heard..." He shook his head. "That’s not him."

"And there speaks the man who used to hunt leeches for a living," Edgar said, his relief palpable. "So I suppose you ought to know."

"Maybe we’ll never know for certain."

"Well." Edgar slapped his palms against his legs. "I suppose I’d better go and face the music. Goodnight, McCullum."

McCullum snorted. "Good luck," he said, and his tone did not bode well.

 

* * *

 

Back at the house, Edgar found Jonathan slumped in the chair, his face in his hands. He went still at Edgar’s entrance, then lifted his head slowly, the shadows around his eyes seeming even darker. "You _lied_ to me, Edgar."

"Not as such."

"Misled me then. You led me to think..." He drew a sharp painful breath. "You led me to think I’d done nothing wrong. That it was nothing more than a misunderstanding. If what McCullum says is true..."

"It isn’t. Listen to me Jonathan," Edgar went to him, kneeling before him and taking his hands. "Even Geoffrey McCullum – _McCullum_ , mark you – doesn’t believe it was you. He told me so himself.”

Their fingers entwined. "And if he’s wrong? If you’re both wrong? I swore I’d never kill again. I’ve seen too much death. The war, the flu, everything that came after..." His voice choked up.

Edgar stared up at him, his own throat tight, then rose suddenly, crossing to the desk. He pulled out everything he had from where it had been hidden at the back of the drawer, every file, every report he’d received from the Brotherhood over the interceding years, and threw them into Jonathan’s lap.

"That is all there is," Edgar told him, tapping his hand on top of the files. "And _none_ of it is proof. At the very most it’s circumstantial. No jury would use it to convict. Read it, Jonathan, please."

"Edgar..."

" _Please,_ Jonathan. I want you to read the reports. Before you say anything more, read them."

Slowly he nodded, opened the files and began to read. Edgar took up the Agatha Christie and flicked through the first few pages, but his gaze kept returning to Jonathan. His eyes moved in disjointed little twitches over the words, and every so often he’d make a quiet little growl under his breath, the crease deepening between his brows. When he finished, turning the last sheet of paper to check the back, he threw the lot aside. Edgar opened his mouth to speak, and he held up his hand.

"Give me a moment, Edgar. Please."

Edgar nodded, swallowed. Closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Jonathan had pulled from his pocket the vial of blood Edgar had found in his trousers when he’d first arrived. He turned it in his hand like a lucky charm, the crease between his brows deepening. Mouth dry, Edgar could focus on nothing but that little vial of blood, the way the liquid inside flowed slow as treacle and how rich and thick and ambrosial it would taste. Finer, perhaps, than even Jonathan’s blood.

"It seems," Jonathan said distractedly, "that the Brotherhood believe I am a monster."

"Rumour and conjecture. It’s nothing but circumstantial evidence. You’ve read it now. All of it. Would you convict another man on evidence like that, or only yourself?"

"That is _me_ those witnesses were describing, Edgar."

"Or a man who resembles you. Or..." Edgar hesitated. "Or else someone is determined to frame you."

"You’ve been reading too many mysteries. That seems rather far-fetched."

"More far-fetched than anything we’ve already been through?" he asked and Jonathan’s frown deepened. Edgar nodded to the reports. "Do you remember any of it?"

He stared at them, then shook his head. The vial tilted, catching the light. "Not a thing. I have been lost, Edgar, in an ocean of despair. All I can remember is darkness."

"Do you think… do you accept it’s possible that it wasn’t you?"

Jonathan was silent for a moment. "There was a woman," he said slowly, "Carina Billow. I met her in the West End, during the epidemic. She’d been driven to extremities by a fellow Ekon in some twisted game, forced to eat rats." He rubbed his face, eyes closing for a moment. "She begged me for release."

"Did you give it to her?"

"No." He glanced up, almost angry, his eyes darkening. In that moment he looked so like his own self Edgar would have smiled in relief if the moment hadn’t been so inappropriate. "How could I have, Edgar? ‘First, do no harm’. The woman was ill..."

"Or tormented. The pawn of an Ekon, and from what you describe an exceptionally cruel one at that."

He nodded. "I meant to make enquiries with Ascalon, but everything moved so fast the matter slipped my mind..." He made a frustrated gesture, his brows knitting.

"It’s always possible the Ekon grew bored and released her from the torment. I have some contacts at Ascalon these days. I can ask around."

"No conflicts of interest at play, Edgar?"

"Oh, I’m not a member." Although conflicts of interest did seem to be a common occurrence in Edgar’s life these days. "Only one of their many peripheral hangers-on. Begging for scraps from the master’s table."

"Regardless, whatever monster it was, he was able to plant the idea in her head. She couldn’t fight it. She knew the belief was false, and still… Compulsion is a powerful tool, Edgar. It’s possible to plant false memories in mortal minds, but if someone has done that to make it seem as if I am a killer, then why? To what end?"

"Revenge, perhaps? You trod on a lot of toes at Ascalon. Or a twisted game, much like your poor Miss Billow. Or with the intention of removing a powerful rival."

"Ascalon again?"

"Perhaps." Edgar’s gaze fixed on the vial in Jonathan’s hand, "Or another party working from the shadows."

Jonathan followed his gaze and held the vial between finger and thumb, holding it up to the light. Edgar’s mouth flooded with saliva. "What do you know about Usher Talltree?" Jonathan asked.

"Well, for one thing he doesn’t like me much. He never did, but he likes me even less now." Edgar brushed a speck of lint from his trousers. "I meant to seek leadership of the Brotherhood myself for a time, you know."

"But you didn’t?"

"No, I..." Edgar frowned. "It never seemed to be quite the right moment."

"He gave this to me," Jonathan said, watching the blood inside the vial. "A gift in payment for a favour. Is he a vampire?"

Edgar gave a startled laugh. " _Talltree_? Good Lord, no."

Jonathan studied him. "You’re quite certain?"

"Of course I’m certain. I’ve heard the rumours, but, Jonathan, they’re nonsensical slanders spread by Priwen. He’s an old man. He must be almost seventy now."

"He’s ageing?"

"Mortals do as a rule."

"Hmm." He brought the vial to his mouth, and, seeming almost unaware he was doing it, rubbed the rim of it along his lower lip. Why the sight of that should make Edgar feel so alarmed he could not say. "Is there any way that could be faked? We are creatures of deceit, after all."

Edgar stared at him, and could not answer. He thought of the way that moment of announcing his intention of running for Primate had never quite seemed to come, of Talltree’s placid expression as Frederick Haughton spoke hesitatingly, haltingly, of the possibility of raising the Ban of the Dragon.

He couldn’t speak. His gaze had fixed on the vial, on the thick blood it held. Jonathan looked up, frowning. "Edgar?"

"I don’t know," he said. He had to force the words out. "But… but perhaps." He hesitated. "Jonathan, do you know what the Ban of the Dragon is?"

"I believe I’ve heard of it."

"The Brotherhood hasn’t raised a Ban in over a century. It hasn’t even been considered, to the best of my knowledge, until very recently."

"For me."

He nodded, mouth so dry he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

"And it was Talltree who made the suggestion?"

"No. He was very careful to remain impartial. In appearance at least." _Do you hear his voice, Edgar?_

A muscle tightened in Jonathan’s jaw. His eyes had darkened, some trick of the light that made his eyes seem blood red. "And what decision was taken?"

"None. We had no proof, no way of knowing for certain. As long as doubt remained, the Ban could not be called."

He growled and stood, clenching his fist around the vial. "Very well." He glanced at Edgar, eyes narrowed. "Have you told the Brotherhood that I’m here?"

"Of course not."

"You surprise me, Edgar. I thought you were loyal to them."

"Jonathan..." Edgar drew a breath, and approached him, catching hold of his hand. "I’m loyal to you."

"Out of some… slavish compulsion to obey your Maker?"

"I don’t believe so. Although perhaps I’ll never be able to say for certain. But I believe in my heart that my loyalty to you stems from the bonds of friendship. And… well. You know. Besides, you did save my life." He swallowed. "What do you mean to do?"

"I am tired of being the counter in somebody else’s game. I intend to take up the dice for myself. And since I remain _persona non grata_ with Ascalon and I doubt the Guard of Priwen would have me, I think it’s time I joined the Brotherhood."

"By the Stole, that’s wonderful news. The Brotherhood will be lucky to have you." Edgar gave a weak chuckle. "And they’ve never once been known to raise the Ban on one of its own, so that’s one problem solved."

"You almost sound relieved. Did you think I’d set my mind on murdering them all?" He tilted his head, looking amused. "Be honest, Edgar, is there even the slightest doubt in your mind about my innocence?"

"Absolutely none at all."

"But in which direction?" he murmured. "Or doesn’t that matter?"

Edgar tried for a smile. "I’m a reformed character these days, Jonathan. Of course it matters." He caught hold of Jonathan’s hand, a thumb running over his knuckles. "And you forget, until very recently I’ve been hearing your voice in my head almost every night for the past twenty or so years. I find it hard to believe that was the voice of a killer."

"Perhaps I should have known you would always be the one to have faith in me." He pulled Edgar closer and kissed him, ran his lips down the line of his jaw to the skin beneath his ear, finding the pulse. His breath warmed Edgar’s skin, then Jonathan brought his lips to Edgar’s ear with a gentle nip to the lobe, and he murmured, "But I think you might be forgetting one thing too, Edgar."

"Which is?"

Jonathan pulled back in a swift movement, eyes dark and glittering, his voice rich with dark humour. "Vampires _lie._ "

Of course, Edgar was quite certain he was joking. Mostly.


End file.
